See You at the Bottom
by Obsidian Productions
Summary: TJ Detweiler is twenty four years old now and staring down the barrel of a life bereft of meaning. When he was younger, being an office drone was not exactly the life he had envisioned for himself. When a cryptic message from Spinelli sends him back home, he runs into Randall, who offers to help him find Spinelli. They head into the dark rainy night to learn the truth.
1. Chapter 01: Back Home

He was going home.

It was funny, in an awful, ironic kind of way, that this thought was what passed through his mind as he looked out the rain-slicked window to his right, watching the state unroll beneath him, barely visible through the heavy cloud cover. Only a scant few years ago, he no longer thought of this place as home. He'd been eager, desperately so, to escape it, to escape the terminal velocity of mediocrity that he saw as inevitable were he to stay in his home town.

Back then, six years ago, TJ honestly felt like the whole world was just waiting for him out there, and had leaped at the chance of going to an out of state college. He saw his pallid reflection grin in the reflection of the window. TJ. Although he'd lost the moniker after high school, eventually settling on Theo, (it was weird, but not so weird that it was alienating, he'd always thought it would seem kind of cool and strange to his own generation, and more refined and dignified to the older generations), he'd never, in his head, or his heart, stopped thinking of himself as TJ. No one had called him that for a long time now.

Well, no one before yesterday, anyway.

As he heard the pilot announce that the plane was on its final approach now, TJ turned away from the window, tried to turn away from the strange sense of dislocation that had settled over him, and closed his eyes.

He needed to gather his thoughts.

He needed to center and ground himself.

He was tired of walking around feeling like a man in a dream, or like a constant miasmic haze of confusion was hanging around his brain. No, he needed to focus, to find himself again if he was going to do this right.

Whatever _this_ was.

TJ was twenty four years old now. When high school had come to a close, he'd gotten accepted to a college and had gone promptly there, intending to get a degree in politics. But somewhere along the way, he'd gotten...lost. Politics became business. It was safer, more certain. Staring down the barrel of actually living life on his own, of paying his own bills and owning his own car and furniture and habitation...well, safer seemed saner. He found that his mind was surprisingly adept at business and office work, even if he didn't enjoy it at all.

He'd known that Jimmy, or James as he liked to be called now, had gotten accepted to the college as well. They'd ended up getting an apartment together two years in. TJ had always wondered why, but he thought he knew. In some bizarre metamorphosis, Guru Kid had become Jimmy in high school, and then he became James in college. James was prudent, James was smart, James was cautious financially. TJ had the idea that James and Menlo would've gotten along very well. Which was what had confused him.

Why would someone like James want TJ as a roommate?

He didn't think that he was wild and crazy and irresponsible, but he also wouldn't describe himself as prudent.

Or, before this year perhaps he wouldn't have.

TJ thought it was a moment of weakness on James's part. TJ was a relic of his past, comfortable only in his familiarity, and so he had accepted his annoying tendencies in exchange for a modicum of comfort by proxy. TJ had always been grateful for that. Hell, they lived together to this day...although that might change.

Everything might change.

There were stories, he remembered, of people waking up one day and realizing they were forty five years old, and hadn't actually _done_ anything with their life. They had let life happen to them rather than actually lived it. He'd never really understood those stories, never really knew what that actually meant, intellectually or even emotionally.

And then, about two weeks ago, he'd had a nightmare.

In it, he was back at his old elementary school. Back at good old Third Street School. And he had gone out onto the playground, onto the blacktop that suddenly seemed almost painful in its familiarity and the nostalgic comfort it provided. There were kids everywhere. He knew most of them. He'd gone looking for his friends, but he couldn't seem to find them anywhere. And what was worse, everyone he talked to didn't recognize him.

No one even knew his name.

And he had eventually found them, but they didn't recognize him either. They hardly even acknowledged him. Not Gus nor Vince nor Gretchen nor Mikey. Not even Spinelli would admit to knowing who he had ever been.

TJ had awoken from that nightmare with a scream trapped in his throat and it had been some strange combination of luck and willpower that it hadn't escaped. God, how hard that would've been to explain to James and probably most of the other people in their building if he had woken up screaming bloody murder.

Initially, he had mistook that nightmare for a spiritual wound, and thought that he was still feeling its effects days, weeks later. But recently he'd discovered the truth of the matter. That nightmare was not a wound, but a needle that had penetrated the real, much older wound that had been growing swollen with spiritual and emotional toxicity for years and years now. It had, in effect, lanced it, and let the infection begin to spill out.

And he was seeing all that tumbled out.

He'd begun to cautiously probe its depths only very recently, and it had led him to...this. It was last night, a Friday night, that everything had come crashing down. James was out of town, on some business trip, and he'd had the run of the apartment. TJ had been crashed out on the couch with pizza and wings and beer trying very hard to just check out, turn his brain off, since it had been spinning like a top all day.

All freaking week now.

He was marathoning Darkwing Duck since he'd bought all three seasons on DVD last month. That was, he realized now, looking back on it, the worst thing he could have done. He had honestly thought that the simple nostalgia of watching his old favorite cartoon would help him zone out, but instead it had ripped open his slowly seeping emotional wound. Like a dam giving way in a sudden, violent eruption, it had nearly given him a panic attack. All of his fears and worries and doubts and anxieties had come bursting out.

TJ had gone to his laptop suddenly and, unsure of what exactly it was he was going to do, had checked his e-mail. It was second nature by then, just something he did almost without thinking about, and there had been a single new message.

From Spinelli.

At first he'd almost deleted it, thinking it to be spam, because he didn't recognize the address. But the fact that it said _I could really use some help_ made him at least pause and then open it. He was so, so glad that he had, because, as it turned out, it was from Spinelli. All it had said was _TJ, could really use someone to talk to right now, and we haven't talked in a really long time. Do you think you could give me a call?_

Followed by her number. He'd immediately grabbed his cell and punched in the number, but it went straight to voicemail.

From there, he hadn't exactly been at his most rational. This sudden injection of mystery into his life had spurred him into action, and all at once he'd bought a plane ticket back home. It had been torture waiting until he could leave for the terminal. He'd ended up taking a taxi there four hours early, had gone through security and all that jazz and had ended up waiting close to three hours before his flight was ready to be boarded.

The only mercy he'd been afforded so far was that he'd slept through most of the three hour trip. Now he was awake and kind of fidgety. Local time when they touched down would be around four in the afternoon.

He jerked slightly as the pilot began speaking over the intercom, announcing that they were now entering their final descent. TJ took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his eyes inexorably drawn to the window again. They were descending all right. It made his heart hammer in his chest. He'd never liked airplanes. Well, _being_ in them. There were obvious reasons as to why, but honestly he thought a lot of it had to do with a movie he'd seen a really long time ago. Back in ninety-five, there'd been a two-part, lengthy adaptation of a Stephen King book called The Langoliers. It had both captivated and terrified him. The plot revolved largely around people on a plane.

TJ stopped thinking about that and made himself sit back. He closed his eyes. There was enough to make him nervous and anxious right now. Instead, as the plane descended, he thought about what he was going to do. After going through the BS of getting out of the terminal, he was going to take a taxi to Spinelli's parent's place. He obviously didn't know where or if she'd moved, and figured that her parents would know.

God, was she even still in town?

He thought he would have heard about it if she'd moved that far away, but...well, maybe not. They hadn't exactly been staying in contact recently. Well, either way, that was his plan. The fact that he hadn't realized until he'd actually gotten to the terminal that he hadn't brought anything but what was in his pockets was a testament to how freaked out he was. It didn't matter, though. He had money, he could buy whatever he needed. It wasn't like he was going to be here forever. TJ felt himself tense as the plane touched down.

He was back home.

* * *

TJ looked around the terminal.

It seemed too bright, a confusing proliferation of people coming and going to and from a hundred different locations. He felt strangely numb as he turned his phone back on, walking out of the walkway and into the terminal at large. He'd half-expected to see a missed call or a text from someone, but there were none.

He supposed at this point no one even knew he was gone from the city he lived in.

TJ felt strangely isolated as he moved through the shifting crowd, listening to several hundred voices overlap and wash over him. At that moment, he felt that same sense of longing and painful nostalgia hitting him, and he thought that he would have given a fair amount to see even a single familiar face.

He finished getting through the terminal and as he stepped outside into the chilly October air, rain falling from dead gray skies, he scanned the row of taxis and cars that were lined up in front of the varied exits...and froze.

His gaze fell upon a familiar face, and he suddenly wondered if perhaps he had been incorrect in his assessment as to how much he wanted to see someone, anyone from his past.

"Hello, TJ," Randall said, a cigarette dangling from his lips, "long time no see."


	2. Chapter 02: If I Had A Heart

Seeing Randall standing there, leaning against one of the pillars that supported the roof, smirking at him, was utterly unreal.

He suddenly wondered if he had gone crazy.

"Randall?" he asked finally, his comment extremely belayed.

Randall seemed content to let him work it out. "Yes, TJ."

TJ blinked a few times and looked around. People were still coming and going. "Did you...are you _waiting_ for me?" he asked.

"Yes," Randall replied. He took a drag on the cigarette, its glowing tip briefly catching yellow sparks in his eyes.

"How did you even know I was coming here? _I_ didn't even know I was coming here until yesterday..."

Randall shrugged easily. "I have a lot of contacts nowadays, TJ. And I can put pieces together. That and a little bit of luck. What I don't know is _why_ you up and decided to come back home after all these years. That got me curious."

TJ stared at Randall, everything else falling away. This was just too weird. He wondered how much he should tell Randall, if he should tell him anything at all. If maybe he should just walk away. His dealings with the man in the past had been...less than pleasant. But in the end, curiosity won out, and the unhappy admission that seeing him did, in fact, give him some small quantum of solace, if only because of his familiarity.

He felt a sudden pang of empathy for James.

"I'm looking for Spinelli," he replied finally.

Randall's grin broadened. "Well, I'm just the man to help, then, seeing as finding people is my job," he replied. "Come on, I'll give you a lift to her parent's place."

"So she is still in town?" TJ asked as Randall pushed himself up off the pillar, turned and began heading away.

"Yep," he replied as they crossed the crosswalk, making for the parking garage just on the other side. "Still lives with her parents. She's moved out a few times but always ends up going back for one reason or another."

"How do you know this?" TJ asked.

"I just, you know, know things," he replied. "It's my job, and it was my hobby, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember all right," TJ muttered.

They came into the parking garage and moved among the cars until they finally came to a low, sleek, black two door. TJ had to admit, it was a really nice looking car. Randall pulled out his keyring and hit a button on the fob, unlocking the doors. They both got in. Damn, the interior was clean. It almost looked freshly detailed and vacuumed, the windows polished to near-perfect transparency. And it smelled nice.

"Where'd you get the money for this?" he asked.

Randall started up the car. "I'm a private investigator now. A PI. If you're good at it, and, come on, you know I would be, there's a lot of money to be had."

"In this town?" TJ asked.

"Yes, this and other towns. I travel, sometimes. I was in New York six months ago. Made a killing out there."

"Interesting," TJ murmured, his mind still spinning. He tried to keep the conversation going, because he was remembering just how much information Randall typically had rolling around in his head at any given time. "Do you know if Spinelli might be in any trouble?"

"Maybe. She hasn't had the best luck since high school. Honestly, she hasn't seemed to have had the best luck for a long time now," Randall replied with a shrug. They were driving into the city now, the windshield wipers making hypnotic progress back and forth across the glass. It felt strange to look at this place now, years after the fact.

He didn't recognize any of the buildings they drove by.

"How do you know that?" he asked again.

Randall was silent for a few seconds, casting a sidelong glance at TJ, as though trying to judge whether or not he should tell him the truth. "I keep tabs on most people that we went to school with," he said finally. "Like a hobby, you know?"

"Tabs? Like...surveillance?" TJ asked uncomfortably.

"No, no. Nothing like that. Not spying. Just, you know, figuring out where everyone is, what everyone's up to. My brain...it kinda runs a million miles a minute, you know? It takes a lot to keep me occupied, keep me from going crazy, and...well, call me nostalgic, but I like knowing things about everyone we grew up with."

"You know about Guru Kid?"

"Yeah, you two live and work together." It wasn't even a question.

"You're creepy. You know that, right?"

"I know."

They drove in silence for several seconds. Despite everything, despite how weird it was to see Randall, and the weird things he was seeing, and the fact that he apparently kept tabs on everyone...TJ was beginning to feel better. He wondered what that said about himself, about the inherent frailty of human nature. How strange and uncomfortable it was that anything that was familiar, even something bad, offered some kind of comfort in stressful times. Although he didn't think Randall was _all_ bad. He'd figured that out in school.

He was just...devious. That didn't necessarily mean evil.

And yet, the idea that he was riding through his old town with Randall J. Weems of all people, made his sense of dislocation even more powerful.

He was reminded, suddenly and intensely, of the time he had ruled the playground with an iron fist, controlling most of its economy of Monstickers. He had turned to Randall then to help him run it...and even Randall had fled his madness. The memory made him deeply uncomfortable, and he knew that even then he had in him a great capacity for business and economic related work, for power and control. Although being an office drone surrounded by either button-down types like James and Menlo or frat-house idiots desperately trying to hold down a job and still be 'cool' was not his idea of economic rule, not even his idea of a life.

"You been talking with your crew at all?" Randall asked. "I mean, besides Spinelli. It sounds like I know more about her than you do by now."

TJ wanted to say something cutting to that, snap out a retort, but...Randall was right. "Not really. Not since most of them went on to way bigger lives."

"Like Gretchen?" he asked. "Did you hear she just joined a research team that got an enormous grant? They're currently researching the cure for HIV."

"I hadn't heard," he said quietly. Gretchen had disappeared about two years into high school. She was so damned smart that she burned through it and ended up getting enrolled in some kind of special, gifted college program at sixteen. She'd sent him a few messages...and then had dropped off completely. He didn't blame her. She was living the dream. By now, he thought that she probably had a PhD.

"And you know, I assume, that Vince is in the NBA?"

"Yeah, got picked up right outta college," TJ replied, almost defensively. He did at least know that. Sometimes he checked up on Vince's career. The guy was on fire. People were calling him the next Michael Jordan.

"No surprise there, sports was, well, is that guy's life." Randall took a deep pull on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in a pristine, shiny silver ashtray in between the two seats as he blew a formless cloud of blue smoke out through his nostrils. "You smoke?"

"You don't know?" TJ asked.

"I know you don't, just thought I'd ask."

"How can you possible know that?" TJ replied, looking over at him.

"No nicotine stains on your teeth or between your fingers. Plus, you don't smell like cigs either," he explained.

TJ sighed.

"And Gus? You heard from Gustav lately?" Randall asked.

"No, not since he joined the Army."

"Makes sense. You know he's married?"

"Duh, I was at his wedding. I was his best man."

"Huh. Dunno how I missed that one...oh wait, I was in California at the time, running down a skip-trace. She's still here in town. Maybe we can pay Mrs. Griswald a visit, huh?"

"Maybe," TJ replied, crossing his arms. "I just want to find Spinelli right now."

"I know. We're almost there."

They drove on. He found his mind turning to his former friends. Was that right? Former? Part of him wanted to think that no, they were still his friends. And another part posited that, although there was no animosity between them, that he felt decently confident that any one of them would receive him with open arms were they to run into each other again...well, they were no longer friends in the same sense of the word because they hadn't talked to each other in years at this point. Gretchen had been the first one to drop off the grid, but that made sense. The gap between them had seemed so exaggerated in elementary school, but it hadn't even begun to really dawn on him until high school just how goddamned smart she was.

It wasn't _just_ smart, either.

Smart meant several things to several different people, but generally, in school, smart was you got all As. But Gretchen had been so far beyond that. He knew now that she was a contemporary Einstein. Her intellect was staggering. It felt so strange to think that now. How must it have felt to have gone to school with someone like Einstein or Stephen Hawking or Neil DeGrasse Tyson? She was probably the largest of the group in terms of potential and where they ended up.

Vince easily achieved second on that list. The idea that he had gone into the NBA was almost a given in elementary and middle school, even through most of high school. But the gravity of that reality, the enormity of it, hadn't really hit him until he'd been watching a game a few years ago and everyone was raving for or at Vince as he tore ass up and down the court, depending which team they supported, and TJ had commented that he'd gone to school with Vince. When no one had believed him, he'd shown them some pictures he had on his phone.

Gus seemed more real. Gustav, as he'd started liking to be called near the end of high school. He had gotten...strange. Not necessarily in a good way. Gus had grown somehow colder, more distant, and, naturally, obsessed with the military. Like his old man, he'd gone into the Army right away after high school. He acted like it was his calling in life. TJ always thought it was weird that he'd gotten married in the midst of all this. It wasn't that he thought long-distance relationships couldn't work, it just seemed...awful.

And there had been something there, something uncomfortable at the wedding and the few times he'd seen Gus and his wife together. It was like...like he was performing a duty. Like getting married was checking an item off a list. Maybe he was totally wrong on that, it could be a profoundly insulting thing to think about someone, and he'd never say it to Gus, but...that's just what it seemed like. He didn't really like thinking about this.

"There it is," Randall said.

TJ was yanked from the murky depths of his memories as Randall pulled into an empty driveway. TJ felt his hopes sink as he looked at the house: there wasn't a single light on. He got out anyway. Randall stayed in the idling car as he walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. He waited. No footsteps sounded. No lights turned on. He checked his watch. It was four thirty in the afternoon. The day was prematurely darkened by the overcast skies, but even so, sunset wasn't more than two or so hours away by now.

He rang the doorbell once more and then knocked a few times. Then finally he tried calling Spinelli again, but it went straight to voicemail once more.

Sighing, he turned and looked back.

Randall was staring at him from behind a rain-streaked window, the end of his cigarette illuminating his strange face. In that moment, a bizarre and almost untraceable connection was made with something he'd seen earlier. Randall looked like someone. Someone he'd seen kind of recently. He thought for a moment, staring back at him, his mind suddenly zipping through memories with an almost desperate intensity.

And then he had it.

He'd been flipping through channels this summer and had come across a show on HBO called The Neistat Brothers. He'd just watched one of the episodes, but one of them, Casey, had a very distinctive appearance, and all at once he realized that him and Randall looked a lot alike. He shook his head slightly, pulling himself back to the here and now. His brain was all too eager to go off on tangents it seemed.

He needed to find Spinelli.

And, sadly, he had literally no idea where she might be. Which meant that, for now at least, he was completely dependent on his strange, obsessive ex-classmate.

As TJ began walking back to the car, hands shoved into his pockets, Randall grinned.


	3. Chapter 03: Wasted Years

"How much is actually different?" TJ asked suddenly, shattering the silence that had settled over the clean, smoke-hazed interior of Randall's car.

"Not as much as you'd think," Randall replied.

"How do you even know what I'm talking about? Do you?"

"The town. The buildings. The streets. And I can just...read people. I know what you're thinking. I mean, if it makes you feel any better, it's not so much _you_ I'm reading as your situation. You're coming home for the first time in years, and it all looks different, and you're wondering exactly how much of this is new, and how much is just your memories and perception."

TJ grunted in response. He'd read somewhere once that one of the primary reasons psychiatrists were so mistreated in their mainstream media portrayals was because of the subconscious hatred of them by the general public, because everyone always thought that psychiatrists read you like a book, and no one wanted to feel like they were easy to figure out. People wanted their thoughts and opinions to _stay_ their thoughts unless they actually said them.

"The Denny's is gone. One of the Taco Bells. There's a new Subway, a couple of sporting goods stores, a new Wal-Mart mega center. They developed a whole bunch of new land over on the east side of town for up-their-own-ass rich people."

"Where do _you_ live?" TJ asked, suddenly stricken with the intense desire to try and throw Randall for a loop, catch him off guard.

"Condo," he replied easily. "West side of town. Two bedrooms."

"You dating anyone?"

He snorted. "No. Not unless you count hookers. Come on, do you really think anyone would be able to tolerate me enough to date me? And that's not even self-pity, it's just self-realization. I know I'm weird, and a little nuts, and kind of hyperactive. Plus I up and leave town like ten times a year for weeks at a time. I'm out at all hours of the night, I smoke, I'm kind of a dick and that's something I'm only marginally good at keeping a lid on. I've got a very poor filter and not a whole lot of respect for the social contract or the human condition."

"Fair enough," TJ murmured. Randall was definitely different. He decided to shift gears. "So where are we actually _going?_ You said you knew some of Spinelli's haunts."

"I do, but in this current moment, we're going to the gas station. I need gas and to dump my ashtray," he replied.

As he was saying it, TJ saw the bright lights of a QuikTrip off to the right. "What about there? Haven't we already passed a few?"

Randall shrugged. "I've got one I like going to."

TJ sighed and gave up. Randall was like a steel vault. There was nothing that TJ could do to pry any information out of him that he didn't want to give up. That was certainly something that had changed about him over the years. It hadn't taken a great deal to intimidate Randall back in the good old days of Third Street Elementary.

He found his mind wandering again as he stared out over the gray wasteland of forgotten childhood. His times back then in elementary school seemed almost mythical now, larger than life, half-remembered dreams. So much had happened back then. Did less happen now? Or was that merely his perception? Back then, when his age was still in the single digits, summer vacation seemed to last for a thousand years.

The school year seemed to take a million.

Time was supposed to lose meaning the older you got. The months seemed to go by faster. You'd stop, suddenly, in October and realize with a kind of creeping horror that holy shit, the year was almost over. Where had it gone, all that time? Wasn't it February like two months ago? It didn't seem real. And that was what was terrifying. Because time was a finite resource. Eventually, you wouldn't have any more time left.

And you always tricked yourself into believing that there was plenty of time left.

"Ah, here we go," Randall said, and pulled off the main road into the cracked, mostly-empty parking lot of a gas station. It clearly wasn't part of any kind of chain, and the sign on the front of the building just read _Bradley's_. The windows had metal mesh grilles over them and a neon sign promised smokes and beers.

"I've got to gas up," Randall said. He craned his neck briefly, looking over at the station, then dug into his pocket and fished out his wallet. He extracted a crisp twenty and passed it to TJ. "Why don't you head inside? Grab a soda or something?"

TJ felt the urge to tell Randall he had his own money, but decided against it. Why not just take the twenty?

"Fine," he said, getting out.

"Take your time," Randall replied, opening the driver's side door.

Take his time? Doing what, getting freaking soda? How long did he expect that to take? Was there some reason he wanted TJ to stay in there for awhile? TJ realized he was thinking in circles, chasing his mental tail, and just walked out from beneath the leaky roof over the gas pump islands. He shoved his hands into his pockets, squinting his eyes against the rain and hunching his shoulders. He hadn't even brought a hoodie.

He stepped into the building and looked around. God, what a damned dump. Dirty floors, half-stocked shelves, and it just had that 'old and broken' feel to it, the one that really old buildings from the sixties or seventies got at some point when they were alive far past their natural lifespan and no one had renovated them. He supposed it made enough sense, given that they were cheap and cheap people tended to avoid things like renovations.

There was only one person in the station, behind the counter, and TJ almost dismissed him, but as his eyes crossed the man's face, they caught, stopped. Familiarity sparked. He frowned, approaching the counter, trying to place the pale, heavyset face before him.

The man was looking back at him almost warily.

"Koreo?" TJ asked.

"Yeah?" he replied cautiously.

"I, um...I'm TJ," he said.

Something dawned on Koreo's face. "Oh shit," he whispered. "TJ. Oh my God, I haven't seen you in forever..." He hesitated, and then a fresh look, one of intense guilt, passed across his features. "I, uh...I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"About what?" TJ replied, but he thought he knew.

"I know me and Lawson and the guys used to rag on you and your friends a lot back in school, and I just-that wasn't cool."

"It's...fine. I mean, it sucked, but whatever. It was a long time ago. Uh...I accept your apology," he replied awkwardly.

A few seconds of deeply uncomfortable silence passed.

Is _this_ why Randall had wanted him in here?

A thought came to TJ all at once. "Um...so, I mean, do you know what happened to Lawson and the others? I lost track after high school. Although I guess I wasn't exactly trying particularly hard to keep track."

Koreo frowned. "He died," he replied, a little bluntly.

TJ felt his heart kick painfully in his chest as a burst of cold fear sent icy needles into his body. "What?! How?" he asked, shocked by the news. The thought that any of their number could be dead only deepened the vague, unsettling horror he had been feeling ever since he'd started this whole strange thing.

"Car wreck," Koreo replied, rubbing one large arm inside a stained, white long-sleeve shirt. "It was maybe a year after high school." He stopped and looked away for a moment. "I was there. We all were. He was buzzed, we were out near the junkyard. He was doing donuts like a dumbass and he just lost control and went into a ravine. Broke his neck."

"Jesus," TJ whispered.

The idea that Erwin Lawson was dead and buried, had been dead and buried for _years_ , was chilling indeed.

"What about the others?" he asked suddenly.

Koreo shrugged. "I don't keep up with them too much nowadays. Buster moved away a few years ago, said his dad had some job for him out in California. Haven't heard from him since. Cheay, too. He went to college, actually, so I guess he got out. Then there's Chuck, or Chucko. We all called him that for whatever reason. He was in and out of juvie for awhile, finally got sent to the big boy version maybe four years ago for robbery. Tried to hold up a gas station." Koreo looked around himself and laughed grimly. "Jocko lives with Mundy now. Remember Mundy?"

"Yeah...didn't he run with Kurst the Worst and her crew? What happened to them?"

"No idea. Alls I know is that Jocko and Mundy live together in some crap apartment in the bad part of town now. They can't hold down a job and sell drugs. I go to see them occasionally. For...well, you know."

"Weed?" TJ hazarded.

"Yeah. They have and do worse stuff, but that's all I'm really interested in. I think they live off of Mundy's mom or something. She pays their rent. That's about all I know, honestly. I don't really see many people from school anymore." He paused, refocused on TJ. "What about you? Didn't you go to college?"

"Yeah."

"How'd it turn out?"

Now it was TJ's turn to shrug. "I got a degree in business. I work and live with James now. Uh...Guru Kid. Got an office job."

Koreo laughed, and it seemed to break through the sullen misery that haunted him. "Guru Kid in a suit? Holy God, that's nuts, man. You, too. I always thought you was gonna be a Senator or an actor or something. But I guess a big-shot businessman is pretty cool, too." He looked around himself once more and the small quantum of happiness he'd discovered flickered and died. A look of glum resignation perched on his pudgy face once more. "I'm stuck here."

"What do you mean?" TJ asked, a renewed sense of terror shooting through him.

Koreo sighed heavily. "I've been working in this damned station for five years now. I hardly make any more than I did when I started, and the old asshole running it won't hire hardly anyone else. I work six days a week between call-ins and no-shows, 'cause he knows if he calls me up to cover I'll do it, 'cause I have no life."

TJ asked the question that he was sure other people had asked Koreo, and hated himself for it, because it was such a generic question, an almost disrespectful one. "Why don't you find another job then?"

But Koreo didn't seem to take offense, and that scared TJ even more. "It's hard," he replied. "Not a whole lot of jobs around. I mean, I _know_ I can do this job, as much as it sucks. But some other job? What if I go to another job and get fired? And then I can't get rehired here? And take a long time to find even another job? I finally live in an apartment. It's little, and crappy, but it's mine. I don't want to move back in with my dad. He's a drunk asshole and screws everything up. I work all the time, and I don't know where to go or what to do with my life." He fell silent, and the look of beaten deference, of surrender, made TJ sick with anxiety and fear.

Because he felt like he was looking at himself.

"How did you make out, then? I mean, you gotta have money, right?"

TJ shook his head, and suddenly words started coming out of his mouth. "I have money, but I don't know what difference it makes. I feel like...I sold out. I cashed in my hopes and my dreams and I gave up so that I could play it safe and pay the bills. And the worst part is, what the hell else could I have done? The economy is crap right now. I don't care what they say, it's garbage, and people are desperate, and I was terrified of...of..."

"Getting stuck," Koreo murmured.

"Yeah. But now I _am_ stuck, it just doesn't seem like it 'cause I'm stuck at a higher up level. I've got money and a car and a nice place, but what difference does it make? I wasted all this time running after safety and security, and I feel like I don't have anything to show for it." He sighed, stopping suddenly. "I'm sorry. I'm sure it seems like crap that I'm here bitching about my life when I've got a good salary and healthcare and a car..."

"No, I get it," Koreo replied. "It's like...what did they call it? I read it somewhere once. The golden handcuffs? Like, yeah, you've got some good stuff, but you're still their slave. That's what we are, man. Wage slaves. It's just more obvious for people like me...and there's a _lot_ of people like me. They keep us down by making us work as hard as possible while also paying us as little as possible. It's like...they're killing our souls, so we'll just shut up and make them money. More money than they could ever possibly need. I mean, after you have like a hundred million dollars, does a million bucks even matter to you anymore? Imagine what you or I could do with a million bucks, but to those CEOs and rich jagoffs, it's a drop in the bucket. They don't even care."

TJ felt himself getting more and more horrified and sick with terror the more Koreo talked, and suddenly he looked back over his shoulder. Randall was in his car again, and he was watching him, smoking a cigarette. Watching him closely.

"I...I have to go," he said, and began making for the door.

"Oh...okay. Uh, good seeing you," Koreo replied awkwardly.

"Yeah, you too. Sorry, I just gotta-I gotta run."

He stumbled back out into the rain and just stood there for a moment, getting himself back under control, fighting not to throw up, because he felt close to it. He knew exactly what was wrong, too. He'd been sitting here miserably examining his own life, certain that he'd messed up, done something wrong, but God, he'd utterly lost perspective, totally forgotten just how far up the ladder he was. There were tons of rungs above him...but definitely more rungs below him, too. And each rung down was exponentially worse.

He could be here, back in town, having gone nowhere, trapped in a minimum-wage existence with no idea what he wanted to do, hating his job but unable to escape it because bills never stopped and there probably wasn't another job out there that he'd actually _like_. He knew that he actually had it really good compared to most people, and that only made it worse. _So much worse_. It was like clawing your way up out of a septic tank, getting up onto dry land...and discovering that, nope, it still sucks up here, too!

Only it sucked a bit less.

He'd almost felt like he was suffocating in that gas station. As he started making for Randall's sleek black car, he realized that he hadn't bought anything. But there was no way, absolutely no way in hell that TJ was going back in that building.


	4. Chapter 04: Ordinary World

"Why did you take me there?" TJ asked.

They'd been driving in silence for a few minutes. Randall was halfway through another cigarette, puffing periodically on it.

"To give you a sense of perspective," he replied, rolling his car to a smooth halt as a light turned red. They came to another intersection he didn't recognize. "I also thought, I dunno, maybe you might get a kick out of seeing where your bullies ended up."

"They weren't really my bullies," TJ said quietly. "I didn't really get bullied. I mean, not compared to some of the shit you see nowadays in the news and on YouTube. God, the 'pranks' asshole teens pull on each other..."

"Yeah," Randall said, and TJ glanced over, detecting a note of genuine bitterness creeping into the man's voice. He was biting down on his cigarette, clenching the steering wheel. TJ knew that he had gone through his own share of hell during his formative years. He remembered trying to help him more than once, even going so far as to pull him away from being a lapdog for Finster. God, what had happened to her? He almost asked but didn't. She was getting on in her years even back in elementary school.

Good chance she was dead.

In the end, Randall had gone back to her, because TJ had figured out, they _both_ had figured out, that being popular, fitting in, all that cliched garbage, it really wasn't worth a whole lot in comparison to a real, genuine friend. Someone who _got_ you, someone who cared about you, someone you just gelled with.

And, weirdly enough, for Randall J. Weems, that someone was Miss Finster.

But it worked, and he didn't really question it anymore after that. Just because he couldn't imagine what a kid could possibly see in that role didn't mean he had to tear it down. You didn't have to understand someone to respect them and their choices.

"It's no goddamned wonder kids are blowing their brains out nowadays," Randall said grimly. "Every other day I hear about a suicide. I swear, it's all the media puts out now. Yeah, I think we had it easy, comparatively. Sure, getting made fun of, even getting beaten up every now and then is bad, but it's nothing compared to what these little assholes can do nowadays with the miracle of social media and a high-rez HD camera in your pocket." He shook his head, killed off his cigarette in one hard pull, stubbed it out and got a new one going.

The red light finally turned green again and they kept moving.

"I swear, where the media is going...it's nowhere good," he muttered.

"What do you mean?" TJ asked. Personally, he didn't put much stock in the news anymore. NBC, Fox, CBS, it all seemed like they were getting harder to trust.

Though really, he wasn't sure he'd ever truly trusted them. Even as a child.

"All they put out there is the bad crap and the pointless crap. The news is a business. People don't realize that, I think. And when you run something like a business, you will inevitably head down a dark path if it's something that's moral or ethical, something people actually _rely_ on. It's why we're so screwed up. Our news and our hospitals are run like businesses. God, can you imagine if we ran the fire department like we run hospitals? Or the police? 'Sorry ma'am, we can't help you, you still haven't paid off your bill from that time we stopped a home invasion.' But the media, it's becoming more and more about views and clicks, and ad revenue."

"I'm not sure I follow," TJ said, but he thought he might, and he didn't like it. Talking with Randall was an exercise in contradictions. The more they talked, the more afraid and anxious he got. And yet, he was compelled to keep going.

"How do you suppose news outlets make their money?"

"Ads. Commercials," he replied.

"Exactly. Now, companies pay them to run those ads. How much they pay tends to be tied to what kind of viewership the channel can pull in. More eyeballs on the screen, more people reached, more money shelled out. Obviously, this incentivizes the news corporations to get more people watching. And what gets people watching more than tragedy? Than gossip? Goddamned celebrity worship? Football for God's sake. It's all they talk about. And the tragedies are the worst. Someone goes nuts and shoots a place up, a natural disaster hits, a building collapses, and they're all over it, feeding you as much as they can, so that people will watch those commercials between the segments, so that they can earn more money. It's exploitative and disgusting. Makes me sick."

"Really? You?" he asked.

Randall glanced over at him. "I know I'm screwed up, but I'm not a monster, TJ."

He didn't know what to say to that, suddenly feeling bad about saying it.

"Anyway, the path this leads down is a bad one. News outlets are only going to get shadier. Worse, a lot of them are owned by like a handful of billionaires. And if the rich, old, white asshole who runs three different mega-news outlets is a racist bigot, then you best believe those news stations are going to run certain stories in certain ways to reflect his views. It's becoming binary. It's becoming us-versus-them. People listen to Fox News, for example, because they're conservative, religious, or Republican, and because Fox News will tell them what they want to hear. How long before Fox starts abusing that? They are already, I'm sure. And it's just as bad on the liberal, Democrat side. And it's only going to get worse, and faster, too. All those huge corporations that've been around for fifty or sixty years are going to get very desperate with the rise of the internet and digital media. They won't adapt, they won't be able to. They're too old, too stubborn, and too stupid to change."

TJ remained silent through all of this, digesting this information. It sounded crazy, in a way, but...it also made a _lot_ of sense.

"Where are we going?" he asked finally, wanting to think about anything else but this.

"A bar," Randall replied. "Spinelli works there as a bartender."

TJ considered that as Randall suddenly pulled off the main road. Spinelli as a bartender? He supposed he could see it. He glanced at the dashboard-mounted clock embedded in Randall's expensive, high-tech sound system. It was pushing seven o'clock. Had he really been here for that long? It didn't feel like several hours had passed. TJ checked his phone as Randall killed the engine and got out.

Still nothing. No calls, no texts.

He sighed and got out too, shutting his door and hurrying across the lot. Hot neon burned out of the rainy gloom at him, buzzing loudly and proclaiming **Rudy's**. He couldn't remember ever seeing the bar before, even though it looked old. Then again, he'd left this place long before he'd hit the drinking age.

Randall pushed the door open and went in. TJ trailed after him. Immediately, he was hit by that miasma of beer, cigarette smoke, and piss that seemed to infest most bars that had that cheap, rundown look. And Rudy's sure as hell did. An old tiled floor covered in a million stains and cracks, a pair of pool tables that were scratched to hell and back, tables and booths populated by regulars. The lights were made dim by a haze of cigarette smoke. He scanned the area, starting up at the bar, hoping to see Spinelli there.

It'd make sense that she wouldn't answer her phone, maybe even turn it off or be forced to let it die if it was low on power, if she was at work. But he didn't see her. Maybe she was in the back. Randall was heading through the blue haze towards the bar. TJ shuffled uncomfortably after him. He felt really out of place here. Old bars just weren't really his thing. He preferred newer, better-lit, more active bars.

These places were just...morose.

Depressing.

It was really the kind of place you came to drink when you were in a shit marriage with someone you didn't love, working a job you hated to support kids you didn't want who were growing up to be entitled assholes.

"You seen Spin around?" Randall asked one of the bartenders.

The guy shook his head. He sported a long mustache and a ponytail and looked somehow greasy. "Nope. She took the past few days off, then did a no call, no show today. You see her, tell her she's in trouble. She can't keep doing shit like this and expect to have a job," the man replied gruffly. He paused. "You want anything?"

"I'm good. TJ?"

"Uh...no, nothing."

"Then why are you here?" he grumbled.

"Pick, relax," Randall replied, and something in his voice made the bartender back off. TJ suddenly wondered what kind of deals Randall ran in places like this, what kind of contacts he had, favors he was owed.

He was the kind of guy who had a lot of angles worked out.

"Now what?" TJ asked.

"I'm thinking, but for now...there's someone you should see. Come on. He might have some intel on Spinelli," Randall replied, nodding to a corner booth where a small group of people had gathered. The one in the middle, TJ immediately recognized as Francis, aka Hustler Kid. Although he was really Hustler Man now. He looked...not all that different, really. He had a mess of short brown hair, done up in a style that somehow seemed to suggest both, well, style, and having just gotten out of bed. TJ assumed gel of some kind was involved.

He had on a black t-shirt with a big white grinning skull across the front, and wore a necklace with a dogtag hanging from the end. There was a lot of stuff on the table in front of him. Cigarettes, food, booze, lots of bills, (TJ spied several hundreds), paper, other random items. Two men and two women occupied the booth as well, the men sitting on the outside while the women sat on either side of Francis.

"Randall!" he called as the two approached his table. "Nah, nah, it's fine, Max," he added when one of the two guys, a huge guy wearing a frown and a tanktop stretched over his musculature and a black beanie, stood up, grunting.

The man eyed them both, then sat back down.

"And...holy shit, is that TJ Detweiler?" Francis asked.

"Guilty as charged," TJ replied awkward.

"Holy God, man. It's been forever. What the hell are you two doing here? I never thought I'd see you two standing together in the same room."

"I was hoping we could have some words," Randall replied.

Francis frowned briefly, sitting up straighter. He seemed to consider something for a scant few seconds, then nodded. "Ladies, gentlemen, I need some time alone," he said.

The women complained but left with the two silent tough guys, who TJ figured had to be bodyguards. Jeez, what was Francis into that required bodyguards? And they didn't go all that far away, either. The two of them slid into the booth as soon as there was room. "So what's happening, you two? Catch me up. It's been a million years, Teej."

"Not a whole lot to say," he replied awkwardly. "I graduated from college with a business degree, got an apartment with Guru Kid, and now I'm an office drone."

"Guru Kid? Huh. What's he do now?"

"Same as me."

"No freaking way...man, that's nuts."

"Why don't you tell him what you do, Francis?" Randall asked.

He sighed heavily. "It's Bootleg, now. Come on, Weems, you know this." He shifted his attention to TJ. "I basically do what I've been doing my whole life: hustling. I get people things. You would be simply shocked at how much money there is in the simple facilitation of getting people things. It's crazy, man."

"What kind of things?" TJ asked, not sure he wanted to know.

Francis shrugged easily, took a drink from his beer. "All sorts of things, really. A lot of it is, uh, medication, if you take my meaning. I loan out money, too. Hey, you need some money? I'd give a real fair interest rate."

"I'm fine," TJ replied.

"Don't hustle him, Francis," Randall said.

Francis sighed again. "You're in a real mood tonight, huh? Me and Randall, we got an understanding. We trade info, usually."

"I'm kind of surprised you're still in town," TJ said.

"What's not to love about this town? And I'm not always here. Travel between here and head up to Worthington every now and then. Got an apartment up there and a nice lady friend. Got an import-expert business up there, too. Man, I can get you anything...so what exactly is it you're looking for? 'Cause you've got that look about you. The one that tells me the only thing I really wanna hear: 'I'm looking for something'."

"I was wondering if you had any information on Spinelli," TJ replied.

"Oh, her. Hmm...not a whole lot, really. I figured Randall here would know more than I do, the way he obsesses over all of us." He fell silent for a moment, rubbing his stubble-stained jaw, mulling it over. "Yeah, okay. I saw her last week. She was picking up work stripping over at that club, what is it...Seduction. No idea if she's there or not, or if she even works there anymore. She seems to bounce between jobs, what I remember."

TJ glanced at Randall, who nodded to him, as though confirming the truth of Francis's words. "All right, thanks, Fran-uh, Hustler K...Bootleg," he murmured.

"Francis is fine when it's you. You were always good to me, TJ. Way I recall it, you were always good to everyone, it seemed. Even your enemies. You're nuts, you know that?"

"Maybe," he replied uncertainly.

Francis leaned in suddenly. "A lot of us never left the town, you know." He nodded over to the bar. "Look there. See that big guy? In the oil-stained red shirt? You recognize him?"

TJ turned and looked. He had a rough side view of an enormous man with a huge beer gut and thinning dark hair. He was indeed wearing an oil-stained red shirt, complete with work boots and old overalls. He looked familiar, actually…

"...Gelman?" he asked uncertainly.

"Nail on the head," Francis replied. "Good ol' Gelman."

"What's he up to nowadays? He looks...miserable," TJ murmured, staring at what had once been the terror of Third Street Elementary. How many kids had he bullied? How many had he abused? God, there was that time he'd beaten the living crap out of Gus. Not a pretty memory. Although he seemed to get a grip after that. He wasn't a saint, but he seemed to be less violent when Gus caused everyone to stand up to him.

"He _is_ miserable," Randall said. "He's got a wife and two kids that he can't stand. Works at a garage. He comes in here more and more."

"Jesus," TJ whispered. "What a nightmare."

"Yep. In a deep contrast to this sad sack, look at the two guys at the other end of the bar," Francis said, nodding again.

TJ squinted, studying the two men through the haze of blue smoke. They did indeed look familiar. Perhaps not in their physical appearances, as he didn't quite recognize the decently buff, bronzed men in t-shirts and jeans, but more in their mannerisms. The way they talked at each other, gestured at each other. He could even just barely pick up their conversation, and although he couldn't make out the words, he could hear their tone of voice, the cadence of their words, and they struck him as deeply familiar, too.

"I give up, who are they?" he asked finally, frustrated at not being able to place them.

"Sam and Dave," Randall replied. "The diggers."

"Holy crap, it is...what do they do now? Work construction? They sure as hell look like they do," TJ said.

"Technically, they do. They own their own construction company," Randall replied. "Took a crazy huge risk and a giant loan from questionable sources straight outta high school. Except they knew exactly what they were doing. Digging, building, it's all they want to do, so they figured it out early on. They're worth a fair amount nowadays. One of the rare real success stories out of Third Street Elementary."

"That's crazy," TJ murmured. He shifted uncomfortably, suddenly desperate to be gone, to keep moving. "Can we get out of here?" he asked.

"Sure," Randall replied, getting up.

"What you want with Spinelli, anyway?" Francis asked.

"Not sure. She asked me for help," TJ replied.

"Huh. Well, I'll keep my ear to the ground, let you know if anything pops up. Good to see you, TJ," Francis replied.

"You too," TJ said.

He and Randall headed back outside.


	5. Chapter 05: Medicate

During college, TJ had gone to more than a few strip clubs.

There was a certain appeal to them, but as time went on, more and more he just stopped seeing the point. He had nothing against relationships, but yes, sometimes, he just wanted to have sex without any difficulties. And that wasn't going to happen in a strip club. Sex was just something that was teased, and it wasn't like he even blamed the women or anything. It was their job to be attractive and dance suggestively, and that was fine. He just didn't see the point in going after awhile. He just wound up horny and frustrated.

The idea of Spinelli stripping was kind of weird. It wasn't that he would judge her for it, because he saw stripping as a legitimate occupation. He respected strippers just as much as he respected anyone else. Nor was it that he thought the job was inherently demeaning...but he thought that _she_ maybe thought it would be demeaning. Or at the very least stupid. Spinelli was a very...pragmatic individual. Then again, they hadn't actually talked for years.

When you were in your early twenties, years was a very long time.

"There it is," Randall murmured, and he pulled off the rain-slicked road into another parking lot lit by the sodium glare of powerful overhead lights. Neon flashed, this time pink. TJ felt a strange familiar feeling settling over him, a tense kind of anticipation and anxiety and lust. He tried to shake it. He just wanted to find Spinelli and figure out what was happening with her. As the two of them got out, TJ looked into the skies.

It was fully dark now, no hint of sunshine left.

That felt significant somehow, as though he had crossed some terminator.

The two of them walked up to the front door and got past the bouncer without a problem once he spotted Randall. He opened the door for them and didn't say anything. TJ followed Randall in. His sense of surreality only strengthened. There was some techno music playing, and smoke created a thin blue haze that made everything seem less substantial, less there, like he was a man in a dream. As he stood there looking around, Randall patted his arm with one hand while simultaneously raising his other hand and motioning for someone.

"TJ, I'll go ask about Spinelli. You look like you need to unwind, so I'm buying you a lapdance," he said.

"That might not be the best idea," TJ replied.

"Trust me, it'll be great."

TJ sighed and turned to face the woman Randall had flagged down. He prepared to tell her that he wasn't in the mood, to apologize, to say something, but when he actually saw her, he couldn't say anything. She was probably the bustiest, hottest redhead he'd ever seen. And she wasn't wearing a whole hell of a lot.

"Uh...okay," he managed.

Randall laughed and passed the woman a fifty. "Show him a good time, Swinger," he said, and then disappeared into the shifting crowd.

The woman tucked the money into the waistband of her thong and turned to face TJ, favoring him with a broad, and surprisingly genuine, smile. She stuck out her hand. "Come on," she said, and when he tentatively took her hand, she led him off.

She looked strangely familiar, but he was sure he'd never hung out with a redhead this hot before. What had Randall called her? Swinger? That seemed like it should mean something, and it struck a chord somewhere deep in his memory, but he couldn't place her.

"Sit back and relax," she said as she brought him to a chair against the back wall and gently but firmly pushed him into it.

"Um, okay," he repeated, feeling dumb in the presence of such an attractive woman.

She leaned forward, showing off her huge, pale breasts, grinning at him. There was something a little funny about her teeth, too.

"Do you remember me, TJ?" she asked.

He hesitated. "I...recognize you, but I don't remember you," he admitted.

"That's fine," the redhead replied, and she straightened up and turned around. Good lord, she had an amazing ass. She backed up and lowered her ass into his crotch and began to grind against his lap. Holy hell he was getting turned on.

It was hard to focus.

"We didn't hang out very much in school, even back in the Third Street days," she continued, and from her tone of voice she seemed to be enjoying the effect she was having on him. "You would remember me from those days as Swinger Girl."

"Holy crap," he said as he connected the dots all at once. It should have been obvious, but he was really distracted just lately. "You look, uh, amazing," he replied.

She laughed, straightened up and turned around. She sat down in his lap, straddling him, facing him now. "You're looking pretty cute, too. If I wasn't pretty heavy into my 'girls only' feelings right now, I'd invite you home after work."

"I...um...wow," he said.

She laughed. "You boys are so easy to distract. I'll tell you something that'll distract you even more," she said.

"Oh yeah?" he breathed.

"See her?" she asked, standing back up and pointing as she placed her foot up on the back of the chair beside his head. He followed her finger, looking away briefly, and saw she was pointing at a hot, skinny blonde pole-dancing across the way.

"Yeah?"

"You might recognize her as Upside-Down Girl. We're dating. We're living together, actually. Just got an apartment together last month. And speaking of Third Streeters...check it out. Recognize him?" she asked, pointing again.

This time she indicated a group of guys all situated around another beautiful brunette pole-dancing, laughing and hitting on her. They looked like a bunch of frat-house bros, aka a bunch of idiots. One of them did look familiar.

And this time he made the connection.

"Bob," he said finally.

"Yep, high and mighty King Bob himself. He's visiting town. He left a few years ago. I think he sells like...vacuums or something. Like door to door."

"Kirby vacuums?" TJ hazarded.

"Yeah, that sounds right. One of those 'can pay a crapload or not a whole lot' kinda jobs. Guess he's on an upswing right now," Swinger said.

"Huh..."

She turned around again, bending over far enough that she began looking at him from between her legs.

"Uh...I had a...um...question," he murmured.

"Yes?" she asked, smirking at him.

"Um..." he focused, trying to remember his question. "Oh, yes. Spinelli. I'm looking for Spinelli. I heard she was here."

"Yes, she was. She's been trying to get a job for a little bit now. I'm doing what I can to help her, but...I'm not sure she has what it takes. I mean, she's pretty, don't get me wrong, in a rough kind of way, sure has a good enough body, but just not the right attitude. She's too...rough around the edges. Too pissed off."

"Do you know anything else about what's been up in her life?" TJ asked.

Swinger shook her head. He realized that he didn't know her real name, but quickly forgot to ask as she kept going.

* * *

TJ wasn't sure how long the lapdance lasted, though he knew it lasted for longer than usual. Eventually, Swinger finished up and had to go. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and told him to check back in about six months, she'd probably be into guys enough again to 'have some fun'. He was still having a lot of difficulty comprehending that. Especially when he'd asked about her relationship with Upside-Down Girl, or, well Upside-Down Woman at this point, and she'd just smirked at him and said "There's a good reason people call me Swinger."

And then she'd disappeared deeper into the club.

TJ was now standing in the middle of it all, looking for Randall. He did not find Randall. Instead, someone else found him.

Someone he recognized right away.

"Menlo?" he asked, his eyes wide. Because holy crap, Menlo looked... _so_ similar to how he used to. He hadn't changed at all. Well, maybe that wasn't entirely true. He supposed it was because he was wearing the exact same tie and glasses he'd worn for...almost his whole life. It was unreal. Menlo came to stand before him.

"TJ...I haven't seen you in a long time," he said.

"Yeah, um...I'm in town, looking for Spinelli," TJ replied awkwardly. "Um...how are you doing?" he asked.

Menlo smiled awkwardly. "I have problems, but I've been successful...will you step outside with me? I actually have a, um, a rather strange favor to ask."

TJ hesitated, but only briefly. He nodded and followed Menlo outside, back into the chilled, rainy October air. They moved a little ways down the front wall of the club. It was very quiet out here. Just the sounds of distant traffic and the rainfall.

A sense of deep discomfort settled over TJ. He and Menlo had been best friends growing up. Despite everything, despite how far they'd grown apart from each other, how disparate their paths had become, there remained, to this day, a strange but intense bond. Seeing his first best friend again, he knew it was still there. They had both helped each other, sometimes with small things, sometimes with huge things, always without question.

"I'm running the local Bank of America," Menlo said with a grin. "Well, two of them, technically speaking. I'm up for a promotion soon, actually. Going to be making six figures. I don't mean to tell you this to brag, but instead to frame the next part of the story." He paused, and TJ waited, feeling that same strange sense of foreboding he'd been feeling this entire surreal night. "I married Ashley A two years ago, after we dated for two years. Our relationship..." he trailed off, sighing, looking away for a moment. "It's not exactly a real relationship."

"What...do you mean?" TJ asked.

"Ashley is a trophy wife, in every sense of the word. We have...an arrangement, worked out now. Men with wives, especially beautiful blonde wives, are statistically more likely to be considered for higher paying positions, and are just generally better received socially. I make enough money that Ashley doesn't have to work, she doesn't have to worry about the bills, she buys pretty much whatever she wants. We live in a nice house, have nice cars, go to nice parties. In the beginning, there was sex. But it's...tapered off, over the past year or so. You know me. You know that my work, my obsessions with cleanliness and precision and order were always at the forefront of my life goals. I have a sex drive, but...it's diminished, and I know Ashley is suffering." He paused, laughed bitterly. "How embarrassing is that? A total nerd loser like me married to a cheerleader hottie like Ashley, and it's hard for me to find the time to have sex with her." He sighed again.

"It's not like that, Menlo. I mean, it doesn't have to be...sex isn't everything," TJ said awkwardly, and his deep discomfort only grew vaster.

He'd always been honest with Menlo, but they had never had a conversation this blunt or this personal before.

"I know. For the most part, we're content. I'm happy to be buried in my work, Ashley is happy with her high-class friends and her hobbies. She works with clay, now. And just recently she's started gardening heavily and making candles." He looked directly at TJ now. "Despite what everyone thinks about Ashley and I, what everyone assumes, Ashley _is_ a good person. I'm not sure if we love each other, but we do like each other, and we respect and trust each other. I believe that she is not sleeping around behind my back. But I also believe that she wants to. And I can't even fault her for that. Which brings me to this very serendipitous meeting."

TJ stared at Menlo in the falling rain. "Are you...asking me..."

"To sleep with my wife, yes. I can have a limo here in ten minutes. I've already texted her about all of this. I had time to when I saw you in the club and I was...shall we say, struck by inspiration. She leaped upon the opportunity. She's already heading for a hotel. You can be in a hotel room with her within half an hour."

Possibly the most off-putting of all of this was the calculating way in which he was explaining everything.

"Menlo, I know we've done a lot of favors for each other, but this...I mean, this is just...this is too weird," he said.

But God, he was already thinking about this.

Because Ashley A…

She was a naturally beautiful woman, but it became far, far more obvious to him when they'd hit high school together. She was model beautiful. And she had been a cheerleader. TJ thought that in high school, there's always a girl that guys like him fell for in an unhealthy way. A girl they fell for because she was so radiantly beautiful, they put her on a pedestal and worshiped her. TJ would never admit it, but he had worshiped Ashley A.

And he'd be lying if he said that he hadn't thought about her in the last year. Hell, in the last month.

"TJ, I understand your hesitation. Try to understand, you'd be doing me a favor. And I know how you feel about Ashley. I know this is something you want intensely. And, believe it or not, she has a thing for you. Sometimes she talks about you when she gets drunk. Jealousy doesn't work in a normal way in my head, TJ. I won't hate you after this, even secretly. I won't hold a grudge against you. While, yes, I don't want Ashley out there sleeping around behind my back...I'm not closed off to the idea of an open relationship, especially if the one she's sleeping with is someone I respect and trust. I know you won't hurt her, TJ. You won't do anything but treat her very well."

"You haven't seen me in years, Menlo."

He smiled. "I know, but I also know you. You haven't changed all that much, TJ. The core of your personality, it's still there. If a little buried. You're still a good person, TJ. I can tell. All three of us will get something out of this."

TJ thought about it, staring back at Menlo, but he already knew that the decision had been made. He was going to do this. He felt a lot of things as he stood there: frustration, guilt, loneliness, intense desire.

He felt pathetic. He was abandoning his search for Spinelli to get laid.

But there was a part of him that knew he needed this. For some reason, no matter how sad or immature or pathetic it was, he needed this.

"Okay," he said finally. "I'll be right back."

"I'll be here," Menlo replied, pulling out his cellphone.

TJ turned and hurried back into the club. It took a bit, but he hunted down Randall. "Did you find her?" TJ asked.

"No, she isn't here. Never even had a job here, actually. Just doing some try-outs. How'd you make out?" he asked.

"I'm...going to go sleep with...Ashley A," he replied, still feeling like he was in a huge daze.

"Whoa, holy crap, man. Wondered if Menlo was going to get around to dealing with that particular problem...asking you to sleep with her seems like a fair compromise. Or, at least, the first step on the path of compromise. Well, go have fun. Here, gimme your number. Call me when you're done, I'll come get you," he replied.

TJ wanted to ask him how the hell he knew, wanted to ask him what he thought about it, beyond what he'd already said, wanted advice, but…

He just gave Randall his number, thanked him, and left.

By the time he got back outside, Menlo's limo was waiting for him.


	6. Chapter 06: Ghosts

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _I highly recommend that, while you are reading this chapter, especially the second half, you go to YouTube and look up the extended version of What Have We Done To Each Other? by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross. It helps add a great deal of atmosphere and despairing isolation to the chapter._

* * *

TJ didn't know what to think as he watched the rain-streaked, dark city roll by beyond the windows of the expensive limousine he rode in the back of. He was alone. There was a driver, obviously, but there was a tinted window separating them. TJ was utterly alone. There were amenities in the limo: he found a mini-bar, a compartment stuffed with snacks, and a TV. But he didn't do anything, didn't enjoy any of it, he just sat there, looking out the window, unable to shake that sense of impossibility.

He was riding in the back of a limousine, on his way to a hotel to have sex with his best friend's wife. Could Menlo even be called his best friend anymore? Did he have a best friend? There were some guys from the office he hung out with, and James was his roommate and they hung out sometimes, but...did he even have friends anymore? When did that happen? The realization that he no longer had real, true friends in his life, the full brunt of that knowledge, made his stomach roll and a wave of despairing, almost crippling, loneliness wash over him.

How had he come here?

What had he done to himself? To his life?

He supposed it was moving away and buckling down hard first to get through his degree, then get into his field, finding a job, busting ass to make sure he maintained that job. Got raises, got promotions, got bonuses. Was it worth it? TJ felt like these were depressingly cliched questions, the old career versus social life thing. A lot of people would tell you a few different things, and he figured it was something everyone had to figure out for themselves. What did he value? What mattered to him? If he decided that friends mattered…

Was he even capable of making friends in the same way he used to be?

Were those halcyon days of yesteryear truly gone forever? Locked behind the wall of time? The thought made him ill.

The limo rolled to a stop and now he was looking at a twenty story, fancy-ass hotel. The limo then turned into the parking lot and drove up under the covered area in front of the main entrance. TJ undid his seatbelt and got out of the car, then hesitated as he realized that the limo driver had also gotten out of the car and was halfway around it, because he'd been coming to open it. Both of them stared at each other awkwardly.

"Um...thanks for the ride," he said finally.

"You're quite welcome. Is there anything else you will require?" the driver replied cordially.

"No, that's fine. I'll be good here by myself."

"Then I shall leave you to it. Goodnight, sir."

"Goodnight."

TJ watched the man go back around the long black car, get into the front and drive off. And then he was alone in the covered area, the rain coming down around him. He realized, all at once, that he had no idea what room Ashley was going to be in. He pulled out his cellphone and prepared to call Randall, to get Menlo's number, but saw that he had a text message. His heart skipped a beat, as he thought it might be Spinelli, but it was an unknown number.

He read it.

 _Hi TJ. Ashley here. Menlo gave me your number.  
_ _I'm in room 875.  
_ _See you soon._

And there was a little heart symbol at the bottom. TJ felt a strong wave of desire and longing and intense, powerful lust ripple through him, and he stopped worrying or thinking about anything else. Replacing his phone, he walked into the hotel, through the lobby, found the elevators and stepped onto the first one.

Riding it up to the eighth floor, he got out and quickly began hunting for Ashley's room. It only took about one minute, but it felt like much longer.

TJ stood before the door, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

He knocked on the door.

It opened almost right away, and he found himself staring at Ashley A. He hadn't seen her in years at this point. Graduation, actually. God, six years ago. She didn't look any different. No, that wasn't right. She looked somehow more attractive than he remembered her. Her hair was a little darker now, leaning more towards brunette than blonde, and what she was wearing immediately showed off her fantastic body. She'd definitely filled out in high school in a really good way, and had clearly kept herself in great shape.

She currently wore a tight t-shirt that made obvious the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra, and some shorts. She was barefoot and her hair was in a ponytail.

"You got here early," she said.

"I'm...sorry," he replied.

She laughed nervously. "It's okay. I just got done with the shower. I was going to put makeup on for, um...for our...you know."

"It's fine. You look amazing," he replied. "Like, seriously amazing. You don't need makeup."

She laughed again, and that seemed to take some of the anxiety out of her, out of both of them. "TJ, you're probably one of the very, very few guys I believe when they try to feed me some crap like that." She stared at him for a bit longer, then sighed, though it seemed more for dramatic effect than anything else. "Well, come in," she said, turning around and walking deeper into the hotel room. His eyes were drawn down.

Good lord those shorts were tight, because her ass and hips filled them out very, very nicely.

He came in and closed, then locked the door behind him, and followed her deeper into the room. It was a very nice, and clearly very expensive, hotel room. Hell, it even had its own bedroom area, separate from the living room section.

And there was a Jacuzzi in the bedroom, next to the bed.

"Wow," he said, glancing in the bedroom as they passed. She went deeper into the living room area and sat down on a comfortable looking loveseat, then patted it.

"Wow indeed," she said as he sat down next to her. She stared at him with her clear blue eyes. "So how are you doing, TJ?"

"I'm..." he considered lying to her, but what was the point? "Not so good."

She frowned. "Why not?"

"It's...complicated. It's a long story. The short of it is: quarter life crisis, I guess? I spent the past six years building a life for myself, a reasonable, responsible life for myself, and I suddenly wondered if it was at all worth it."

"Oh. Wow."

"Sorry to bring the mood down."

"No, it's fine. I..." she hesitated, then smiled at him again, and it was a strangely shy smile, "I always felt like I could trust you. I don't know why. I mean, I guess it's because you're a good person. We hardly ever talked at all, and even when we did, it was...well, I was a much uglier person in my youth. Especially in high school, God." She laughed, a little bitterly. "How far I've come, that I can refer to myself as ugly. Don't worry, not fishing for compliments. I mean ugly in the sense of how I treated other people. In several ways, you were the opposite of me and the other girls in my group. The damned Ashleys."

He remained silent, trying to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind.

"I'm sorry, now _I'm_ bringing the mood down. My point was, I don't feel like I have to BS around you, you know? It's a stupid and cliché thing, how they always told us, over and over again, to just 'be yourself', you remember? But I feel like I can 'be myself' only around a handful of people. You were one of them. It's why I regret not dating you in high school."

"Um...wow," he replied.

"Yeah, I know. I was so vain, so full of myself. To be fair, I mean..." She hesitated.

"To be fair, you come from money and you've always been pretty damned attractive, with people constantly falling over each other to do things for you. That would warp anyone's world view," TJ offered.

She sighed and nodded. "Yeah. It's pathetic, no excuse, really. I feel better, though. After everything that happened..." She paused. "You don't know, do you? It just occurred to me that you don't know what happened to me." He shook his head. "About a year and a half after high school, my dad got indicted because...hell, I can't remember. He was doing something illegal with the business he ran and it all came crashing down. He's still in prison. People always say that big CEO types always make out just fine, and they're usually right, but my dad was one of the rare few that they crucify as a warning to the others."

"God, I'm...I'm sorry."

"Don't be, I'm not. He was a terrible, greedy, self-absorbed person. Mom, too. And my shit little brother. And my bitch little sister. We all sucked. There was a lot of fallout after my dad got locked up. Lots of money leftover, but, well...how did Nikki Sixx put it in that album he put out a few years ago? You remember that album?"

TJ thought it over. "The Heroine Diaries?" he hazarded.

"Yes. That. There was this one line in one of the songs...'when you've tasted excess, everything else is bland', or something like that. When you're a millionaire, anything less than a couple dozen million bucks seems impossible to comprehend. My brother...turned out better than all of us, I think. He signed on for the Army and just got out. Haven't heard from him for about a year now, but last I heard, he was doing good. Got his own life going, totally apart from us. Between mom and my other family members that wanted to squabble over the remaining cash, there was only enough room to lavish one daughter with all the love money can by. Brittany was always her favorite, so naturally she got chosen. I was basically cut off."

"Holy crap, that sucks," TJ replied.

"Yep. Sure did. I...latched onto Menlo at the time, out of desperation." She chuckled nervously and looked away, blushing. "Not the best foundation for a relationship. I could tell he was on his way up, and he was still...asking after me. Not stalking, I don't want to give that impression, but he'd taken to, with a surprising amount of subtle skill for someone like him, letting me know he was still interested. I came to him, told him everything, and...basically set up a deal. And that's how the relationship began. Honestly, though? I think it turned out very well for having grown out of such desperation and, admittedly, pathetic motives."

She sighed again, rubbed the back of her neck. "I'm being gloomy again. I'm sorry, I just don't have anyone to talk to about this stuff, you know?"

"I get it," he replied quietly. "I know what that's like. I haven't really felt like I've had anyone I can really, _really_ talk to about things, except for-" He paused, then laughed loudly.

"What?" she asked.

"Randall. Of all people. Randall is the only person I've been able to talk to for like three years now about anything of any substance. He's been driving me all over town tonight."

"That reminds me, why are you in town? I thought you'd moved away."

"I did. Got a job a few states over. I'm here looking for Spinelli."

Ashley lost her smile. "Oh...the lost Ashley," she murmured. "I haven't even seen her for like, years," she said.

Neither of them said anything after that, each lost in their own thoughts, and then Ashley stood up suddenly. "Come on," she said, offering him her hand. "We should do this, before one or both of us loses their nerve."

He nodded, knowing she was right. Although he didn't think he'd lose his nerve. He wanted this too much, had been dreaming about it for too long.

He took her hand.

Ashley pulled him off of the couch and led him into the bedroom. As they walked inside, he stopped suddenly.

"Oh damn," he whispered.

"What?" she asked, startled, turning to face him.

"I just realized...I don't have any condoms on me."

She stared at him for a moment, as if deciding something, then took a step closer to him. "I trust you, TJ. I don't have any STDs. And I'm on birth control. Do you have any?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't," he replied, and he was at least sure of that. He'd slept with a woman he'd met at a party several months ago, a one night stand, and had gotten really paranoid afterwards, so he'd gotten himself tested. He was still clean and he hadn't managed to find anyone else to hook up with since then.

"I believe you. If you believe me...then we don't have to use protection."

His excitement and lust spiked and he would be lying if he said he was completely rational right now. Yeah, he was thinking with his dick. But he _did_ believe Ashley. And when she took off her t-shirt, he stopped thinking about anything else but her.

* * *

"I have to admit, I feel bad," Ashley said.

They'd been laying together beneath the blankets, nude and sweaty, for a few minutes now. An hour had passed. The first time they'd had sex lasted way too short for both of them, and TJ was rather embarrassed about that, but it just felt _too_ good, and Ashley didn't mind at all. In a way, she was happy with the effect she had on him.

So they'd showered with the intent to go back to bed and try again, except they'd ended up doing it in the shower, and then the bed again, then they'd taken another shower, and finally they'd just finished up a fourth round.

"Why?" he asked. His muscles hurt. He hadn't had so much exercise in a long time. He also felt amazed. He didn't think he'd had the stamina for such a string of sessions. Then again, this was a very unique scenario, and he'd pushed himself pretty hard.

"Because you're better in bed than my husband, and that makes me feel guilty to think that," she murmured dreamily.

"I don't know how to respond to that," he replied.

"Then don't, just lay here and enjoy," she said.

"Enjoy?" he asked, then laughed.

"Enjoy it all. Although, I'm going to be honest, I'm done. I'm sore."

"Agreed. Also, sorry."

"I'm not. Worth it."

He laughed again, a little uncomfortably. He'd always been kind of weird about women and talking about, well, basically anything related to sex. A few minutes passed by. All he could hear was the rainfall and her soft breathing.

"So, Ashley..."

"Yeah?"

"I was curious, what happened to, well, the Ashleys?" he asked.

She sighed. "We all went our own ways. I mean, especially after I had my ejection from high society. Ashley B went on to college in California, I think. Last I'd heard, she'd met a guy on his way to being a surgeon and she ended up dropping out of college and marrying him. Ashley T was actually the most ambitious of us all. She had brains. And she ended up going to college, like freaking Dartmouth, I think. She runs her own business now. Like a travel agency."

"What about Ashley Q?" he asked when she stopped talking.

"Ugh, she's dead."

He rolled over and looked at her. "What? What the hell happened?"

"What happens to rich little snots sometimes: she overdosed on heroine."

"Holy crap...I'm sorry."

"Not as sorry as she was, I imagine," Ashley replied. She sighed again. "I guess that was kind of cold. I don't know, I don't really like any of them. I mean, I guess Ashley T is okay, she never really did wrong by me, but the other two were...well, like me. Like I was..." she fell silent, frowning, and then suddenly sat up. "She's buried down at the graveyard. I haven't been to her grave in a long time. As much as I came to hate her...I did used to make it a point to visit her grave. Would you go with me? I want to go. And...well, she isn't the only one who's dead. Now that you're visiting, I guess you might want to do some visiting yourself."

TJ considered it. He didn't want to. It seemed somehow wrong to do after what had just transpired in this hotel room. But at the same time, it seemed even wronger not to. There were graves that he had to visit, ghosts he had to face. He didn't know why, only that it felt right, and his feelings had been strong and often accurate so far.

"Okay," he said. "I'll go."

"Thank you, TJ. I'll call a limo. And we need another shower."

They both began to get up.

* * *

The limousine deposited them at the entrance of the city's primary graveyard.

It sat and idled on the side of the road, waiting for them. It was still raining, though only lightly. The only light came from a very diminished moon and whatever light the city itself provided. They'd made one stop along the way, Ashley had insisted. Given how cold and wet the night was, she had them stop by a Wal-Mart and ended up buying him a surprisingly nice black hoodie. He now had it zipped up, the hood up over his head.

Ashley took his hand as they began walking into the graveyard, in between the ranked rows of headstones.

"This place is creepy," she murmured.

"Yeah," TJ agreed quietly. Speaking quietly seemed appropriate. They stopped briefly at Lawson's grave. Staring at it gave him that deep sense of discomfort and he didn't linger. They walked a bit longer until Ashley trailed to a stop.

"Look," she said quietly.

TJ looked at the grave she had indicated and suddenly realized that he had his answer to the question he'd wondered, but never voiced, before: Miss Finster was indeed dead. According to the tombstone, she had died two years ago, in December. God, what an awful month to die in. He found it hard to believe she was actually gone.

"To think of all the terror she instilled in us for years," Ashley said.

"Yeah. And now she's gone. Man, Randall must've taken that hard."

"Randall...I still see him around town, sometimes. It seems like he made out okay."

"He did," TJ replied.

They kept walking, passing two more graves on the way that he recognized. Miss Lemon was the first. She had died the year before Miss Finster. And Mister Kelso. He was buried next to his wife. He remembered that one. His wife had gotten cancer TJ's last year of high school. TJ had still been going to Kelso's, a tradition that had survived elementary school. The winter after she had succumbed to the cancer, Mr. Kelso had gotten pneumonia and died as well. His store was closed down and as far as he knew, they'd never been able to sell it.

It was like a grave, too.

Mr. Kelso's passing had felt like...a portend of things to come. A heraldic event that felt like ominous doom, like a tidal wave cresting the horizon. TJ had been unsettled for weeks after that. He knew some of it was due to the fact that it had been winter, and he never did well during winters, but still…

Had he somehow known all that was to come?

"Here she is," Ashley murmured. "Ashley Marie Quinlan. To think that she OD'd at twenty years old. She was, I think, the worst out of us all. The snobbiest, the cruelest, the biggest bitch." Ashley laughed bitterly. "Here I am, a total bitch myself, talking crap about a corpse."

"We all deal with problems differently," TJ said, squeezing her hand.

She sighed, turned to face him and stepped closer to him, then hugged him. "This is so weird," she said. "I thought we'd just have fun and get laid, but you're...as good as I remember you."

"What do you mean?"

"When we were growing up, I always thought you were kind of funny looking, and stupidly naive, and annoying. I didn't realize until later that the only reason you annoyed me so much was because there was something...pure about you. I'm not calling you perfect, but you were always just so...non-BS with everyone. Your motives were simple and often pure. That's what was so appealing about you. And it reflected everything I wasn't, everything I thought that I couldn't ever be. It made me bitter and frightened. You were, you are, a great person," she said.

"I don't know if that's true. Or, if it was true, I don't think it is any longer," he replied.

She pulled back and looked him firmly in the face. All at once he realized he was seeing some of what she said she saw in him: blunt, honest, pure truth. There was nothing in her eyes, in her expression, but pure naked honesty.

"TJ, I don't really know what it is you're going through right now, but I do know that that good part of you, that core, is still there. And wherever you're at right now, you don't have to _stay_ there, you don't have to keep going. You can turn away. You can be better. Okay?"

He wasn't sure if that was true, but he nodded, because she seemed so damned certain.

"Come on, it's getting cold. We have places to be," she said, taking his hand again and leading him back out of the graveyard.

Neither of them seemed to have anything left to say until they reached the limousine again. "So, do you want to hang out some more?" she asked.

"I do, but...I have something important to do," he replied. "And maybe...we shouldn't hang out any further. I think it might...upset the balance of things."

She sighed. "You're right, of course." She stepped closer to him, hesitated, then gave him a long, lingering kiss on the lips. "It was fun, while it lasted."

"It was a _lot_ of fun," he agreed.

"Good luck, TJ. And...don't bullshit anyone, especially yourself, okay?"

"Okay, Ashley. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, TJ."

She got into the limousine, closed the door, and was driven off into the night. He watched the limo until it was out of sight, and then he was completely alone in front of a graveyard at two in the morning with rain coming down on him.

TJ finally pulled out his cell and called Randall.


	7. Chapter 07: King of all Excuses

"Randall...how do you deal with death?"

They had been driving for several minutes now. When Randall had pulled out, he'd had a little bit of news: he'd texted, of all people, Mikey, and discovered that he was still up and wouldn't mind a visit from TJ.

So that's where they were going.

TJ had to admit, he was interested to see how Mikey turned out. He'd been a little...flaky, in high school. He respected Mikey's creative abilities, as they'd only grown since Third Street, but the last time he'd seen him, it didn't seem like they were growing into anything useful. Then again, the guy had been eighteen when they'd last meaningfully interacted and there weren't really any successful creative types who were eighteen years old.

Well, here was hoping Mikey had figured something out.

"I don't, really," Randall replied after thinking about it. "If I'm being totally honest. I just don't think about it. What about you?"

"I guess I don't really deal with it either," he murmured.

"Most people don't. I've got this theory that religion is just fear of the unknown on a mass scale. Did you know that there pretty much doesn't exist a society in our entire history that didn't have some kind of religion? I think it's weird and admittedly a little disappointing that humans are apparently hard-wired to worship something greater than themselves, and then get angry when not everyone _also_ worships the exact same thing they do. It causes so many problems. But humans are afraid of the unknown, so we do all sorts of stuff to deal with it, and death is the ultimate unknown, so I guess we'd work extra hard to come up with something pretty grand to deal with that particular problem. Are you religious, TJ?"

"No, not really. I think I might've been, growing up, in some vague, undefined way. But I've pretty much stopped believing in anything but the here and now," TJ replied.

"Good. I think religion makes people lazy."

"How's that?"

"Consider it. And I guess I don't mean all religions, but what we've really come to think of as the American religion with the God and the praise Jesus! and all that crap. Whenever something happens, typically something shitty, what's the average religious person's go to answer? 'God works in mysterious ways.' And, I mean, that's enough for them. That's the end of the thought. 'Well, God did it, that's good enough for me.' They don't think any further. Not to mention, if you think there's some kind of all-powerful, all-knowing, invisible force out there in the universe that will ensure that the good things happen to the good people and the bad things happen to the bad people, then, well, you don't really feel the need to do much yourself, do you? No, God will sort it out. Plus, that kind of mentality actually makes you a bad person.

"Think about it, how many 'Good Christians' have you seen look at a homeless person and tell them to get a job, stop being so lazy, and they have _no idea_ why that person is homeless. I think a lot of people don't understand, they don't comprehend the idea that it doesn't actually take that much to be homeless. One really bad day, where all the dice fall against you, and you can be straight-up homeless, and it wouldn't be your fault. When most religious people see someone in a bad situation, they think to themselves, 'Well, I guess they got what they deserved. If they didn't deserve to get fired, or get cancer, or get into a car wreck, well, God wouldn't let them'."

"That's messed up," TJ murmured.

"Am I wrong?"

"No. I see a lot of that. You know something that bugs me, actually? When you have people who are socially religious. Like, they go to church like twice a year. Easter and Christmas. And the only time they pull out their religion is to talk down to someone."

"Yep. There's so many 'Good Christians' out there who would rather spit on a homeless person than give them five freaking bucks, or who flip out on some poor teen waitress because their order was screwed up the slightest bit. Obviously it's not only religious people who do this, but you'd think people who identify as not only followers of a religion who's basic tennant is 'don't be an asshole and help other people', but also believe that they are being watched, and more importantly _judged,_ every second of every day, would be far more motivated to _not_ be assholes. The reality of the situation is that religion is just another tool to them, something to be used occasionally to make themselves feel better and put someone else down."

Randall fell silent, then sighed. "I hate people."

"I hate some people, I think," TJ replied.

"I guess they're not all bad. I still can't decide if people as a whole are basically good or basically bad. It's a tough call to make. Anyway, here's where Mikey lives."

"How do you know him?" TJ asked as they pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex.

"You want the truth?" Randall replied.

"I...maybe?" he replied. "Now I'm nervous."

"It's nothing bad. He came to me looking for weed a few years back and occasionally I swing by, catch up. TJ..." Randall hesitated, killing the engine and looking over. "You probably aren't going to like what you see in there."

"What? Why?"

"You'll see."

TJ sighed and got out with Randall. He always had to be so cryptic. Whatever. Surely it couldn't be all that bad, right? Even as he thought it, he found that he didn't really believe it. Not after everything else that had happened so far.

They headed across the lot and into an enclosed area that granted access to the three different stories of the building. They moved up the steps and stopped on the third story. Randall knocked on the door. There was a pause, then the door opened up.

"TJ, holy crap, man. It's been forever," Mikey said, and gave him a hug. TJ didn't hesitate to hug him back. He realized that there was no one in his life who hugged him anymore. "How have you been doing?" he asked, stepping back.

"Okay, I guess," TJ replied.

"Come on in," Mikey said, and led the way into his apartment. It was actually a pretty nice place. Mikey led him into the living room and sat down on a huge beanbag. He'd been in the middle of playing Guitar Hero. The coffee table beside him was littered with the remains of fast food and empty soda cans, with a huge ceramic ashtray that looked custom-made. "I just finished up a song. You wanna play?" he asked, collapsing back into the beanbag.

"I'm good," TJ replied, sitting on a nearby couch with Randall. He studied Mikey for a moment. Mikey had always been a pretty big dude, and that hadn't stopped in high school. Or after, apparently. He was pretty heavyset, but before it had looked kind of natural. He supposed the best way he'd heard it described was that he wore it well. Now wasn't the case. He'd definitely put on a lot of weight since then.

TJ didn't really care that Mikey was overweight, he'd skirted that line himself for a lot of his life. It wasn't like he was fit or even skinny right now. But there was something about it, something about this whole situation, that made him uncomfortable.

"So, uh, what've you been up to? I haven't had any kind of a chance to keep in touch with anyone," TJ asked.

"Oh, you know, got a lot of creative projects going on right now," Mikey replied.

"Really? Like what?" Okay, finally, someone he was visiting tonight who was doing well. Okay, it wasn't like _everyone_ was a miserable failure, but more and more it was just feeling that way.

"Well, um, I've just started self-publishing my stuff on the Kindle. You've heard of it?"

"Yeah, I have, actually."

"It's gonna be big," Randall said. "Really, really big. It's going to change the writing scene completely."

"That's what I'm hoping," Mikey said. "I haven't really managed to make a lot of sales, but I think they'll pick up any day now. And I've been going down to Brookdale for classes off and on for the past year now. I'm trying to get an English degree."

"Nice," TJ replied.

"Yeah. It's kind of slow going because it sometimes interferes with other things I have going on. I do poetry slams wherever I can find them."

"Are there prizes? I bet you'd win them most of the time. You had a natural talent for poetry from a young age and it only got better. I can't imagine how good it must be now."

Mikey grinned and shrugged. "I mean, sometimes. There's a lot of good people in the city, you know."

"I guess so. Oh yeah, before I forget: do you know where Spinelli might be right now? Or have you heard from her at all recently?"

"Spinelli? No, it's been...man, years at least since we've really talked. I mean, she friended me on Facebook last year, but then she deleted her profile sometime after that. I wasn't sure if she ever brought it back," he replied. "Why?"

"I'm looking for her," TJ replied. Something was bugging him. He looked around the apartment. It was pretty nice. Rent had to be somewhere in the ballpark of eight or nine hundred a month, if he had to make a rough estimate. "So I mean you must do okay in some of these poetry slams or contests, right? This is a nice place and I know even community college isn't cheap. Or did you manage to score a nice job somewhere?"

Mikey laughed a little awkwardly. "No, it's been a little bit since I've had a job. I worked at a nursing home as a short order cook for awhile, and my last job was as a cashier down at Hy-Vee, but, I mean, you know me, TJ. Work really isn't for me. Having to get up and go deal with people all day really messes with the creative flow."

TJ began to ask the question, the increasingly obvious and worrying question, of: 'So how do you pay for all this?' when he heard the front door open. All three of them looked over and TJ caught sight of a pretty woman in scrubs coming in. She paused as she saw them.

"Hello," she said.

"Hey, babe," Mikey said. "Um, you know Randall. This is TJ, a friend of mine from high school. He's visiting town."

"Nice to meet you, TJ," she said. "I'm Robin."

"Good to meet you, too," TJ replied.

The woman looked very, very tired. She shut and locked the door behind her as she maneuvered an armful of groceries in a paper bag. She walked into the kitchen.

"That's my girlfriend," Mikey said.

That sinking feeling came back. He heard a frustrated sigh from the kitchen. "Babe, you said you were going to do the dishes before I got home."

"Sorry, honey, I forgot. I got busy," he replied.

There was a pause. "Can you do it before you go to sleep?" she asked finally.

"Yeah, sure."

The sound of groceries being put away came from the kitchen.

"Do you want a joint?" Mikey asked. "I've got some extra right now."

"I'm good," TJ replied.

A moment later, Robin came back out. "I'm going to bed," she said. "I just got done with a twelve hour shift, and I have to head back in in seven hours cause someone called in sick." She hesitated, and looked like she wanted to say more, then just said, "Good to meet you, TJ. Good to see you, Randall. Goodnight."

They all told her goodnight and she left, walking deeper into the apartment.

TJ turned his gaze back to Mikey. "So...Mikey...is she the reason you have this place? And all this stuff?" he asked.

Mikey looked uncomfortable. "I mean, you know, right now yeah. We support each other," he replied.

"How's that?" TJ asked. He really didn't like where this was going, and he didn't even want to go there, but something compelled him to.

"Well, you know, I bring in some of the money from my poetry, and I take care of the apartment..." he hesitated further.

TJ stood up, and so did Randall. He stood up because he knew he was going to have to leave after he said what he had to say. "Mikey...I can't really claim to be your friend anymore, but I still like you, and I still want what's best for you. I could be wrong about some of this, but I don't think I am. And I want to tell you this to help you: you're living off of your insanely hardworking girlfriend so you can screw off all day, play video games, smoke weed, and pretend to be creative. I know nurses work insane hours and are frequently overworked. And I feel like from that interaction you had, you frequently forget to do stuff around the apartment. If I'm wrong, then I'm sorry. You're using your creativity as an excuse to keep from actually working. You need to treat being creative like a job if you're going to make a living off of it, and even then, it often takes a long time to make it work, so you need to be willing to work a crap job alongside being creative. I'm not creative at all, Mikey, and even I know this. So stop sitting around getting high and playing Guitar Hero, go out, get a job, and support your amazing girlfriend."

Mikey didn't say anything as TJ fell silent. He just kept staring at him with that same, bewildered look.

TJ sighed. "Mikey, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be an asshole, I really do want good things for you, but...you can't just leech off of someone else. It's not right. So...just know this comes from a good place. If I'm wrong, then I'm...sorry. I'm leaving now."

TJ thought he would say something as he headed for the door, but he didn't. Mikey didn't say a word as TJ and Randall left. He closed the door behind him and the pair started walking back downstairs.

"That was amazing," Randall said.

"It sure didn't feel amazing," TJ muttered as they got back into his car.

Randall keyed the ignition. "I know, but it was. That took guts. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I found out my friend was a lazy loser."

TJ just sighed. Randall pulled out and started exiting the parking lot. "That was another dead end, now what?" he asked, checking his phone, trying to distract himself from the misery he was currently feeling.

"I texted Theresa, too. She's actually up with her kid right now and wouldn't mind a visit. You know I've still got her as Corn Chip Girl in my phone?"

"Think she knows anything about Spinelli?" TJ asked morosely. The phone was as vacant as ever. He fired off another text to Spinelli just in case.

"Doubt it, but she could use a friend right now, I think."

TJ just stared out at the rainy darkness as they drove on.

* * *

Gus, it turned out, lived in a pretty nice two-story place in a more upscale part of town. Although TJ had to admit that he was a little surprised to notice, in the muted, sodium glow of the streetlights, that his front lawn was a bit overgrown, covered in leaves. That wasn't like him at all. Gus had always been very...precise.

The lights were on in the house.

Randall parked and they got out, though Randall quashed his cigarette in his ashtray before doing so. They walked through the thin rain, across the front yard and up to the porch. The door opened before they could knock.

"Hello, Randall. Hello, TJ."

"Hi, Theresa. How are you doing?" Randall asked as they came in.

"Tired," she replied, and she sure looked and sounded like it. "Come on."

Theresa led them deeper into the house, past a living room littered with baby-related items, the floor scattered with toys, down a hallway and into a dining room. Theresa fell into a seat at the head of the table with a sigh and TJ and Randall joined her in their own seats.

"TJ," she said, offering him a weary smile, as though she suddenly remembered that it would be impolite to ignore him, "it's been a long time. It's good to see you again. I don't think I ever really got a chance to thank you for being best man. Wow...that was so long ago."

"You're welcome," he replied, feeling awkward. "Um...how's everything going? What's Gus up to nowadays? I haven't really had a chance to keep up."

"He's overseas right now," she replied with a sigh. He immediately got the impression it was something she said a lot. "He's been overseas for...quite awhile, at this point."

TJ frowned. "How long, exactly?" he asked.

"The last time he was actually here at home was...almost a year ago now."

He sat up straighter, that same cold fear stealing into him. "Why? Is he...I mean, is everything okay? Is he doing something special?"

"I mean, they've got him very busy. Gus fit into the Army very, very well. He's received several promotions. And so..." she trailed off, and lost any semblance of a tired smile she'd been working on assembling. "No," she said. "He's over there because he wants to be. Because he doesn't want to be back here, with us. With me and his son."

TJ glanced briefly at Randall, who had that same inscrutable look he'd been wearing for most of the night. Like everything else, he knew this was coming. He looked back at Theresa. Her skin was pale and a bit sallow, there were bags under her eyes, her dark hair was pulled into a rough ponytail. She was wearing a robe.

"Why?" he asked finally.

Theresa sighed heavily. "I don't know," she muttered. "I'm sorry to dump all this on you, TJ. God, you show up for the first time in years and the first thing I do is bitch about one of your best friends. But...I haven't had anyone to talk to, I mean actually _talk_ to. I guess besides Randall occasionally. Not that I particularly trust you."

"Thanks," Randall replied.

"It's nothing personal," she said.

"I know, no one trusts me really. It's fine," he replied.

"It's okay, Theresa. I...you really know? I mean, you're sure he wants to be over there? You're sure he wants to be...away from you?" TJ asked cautiously.

"At this point, yes. He started leaving for long periods of time maybe six months after we got married. And that was fine. I mean, it was part of the job. But the periods of time got longer, and longer. I got pregnant about three years ago. We planned it and he promised to start staying for longer, and he did, for a bit, but then something important came up, and...well. Here we are. I haven't even heard from him for almost a month now."

"Why doesn't he move you to wherever he is?" TJ asked.

"I've suggested that. He comes up with one excuse or another. Too dangerous, too difficult, too time-consuming. He doesn't want to uproot us. He said he worked hard to select this house, he chose it specifically because it had a good school nearby, perfectly placed, not too far, not too close from downtown." She sighed. "And I'm basically complicit in all this. My life is being a stay-at-home mom. He certainly makes enough and gets enough benefits so that I don't have to work. My job is to raise our son and maintain the house. Though I've kinda been slacking at that house part recently." She paused, rubbed at one eye. "And it's not even like I have anything against being a stay-at-home mom. I'm fine with it. Or I would be if I had, you know, my husband home even some of the time."

"I...I'm sorry," TJ said after several seconds of uncomfortable silence. All of this was hitting him like a hammer.

"No, I'm sorry. Like I said, I didn't mean to dump all this on you. It's not like my life is really terrible or anything. I have a house, I have an income, a good one, I'm healthy, my son is. He's a good kid. There's several other moms around with kids my son's age, we talk, we hang out. I'm just...missing my husband," she murmured.

Another silence fell.

Before any of the three of them could fill it, a sound came to them: a baby crying. Theresa stood up immediately. "I'm sorry, I've got to go tend to him, and then I really need to be getting to sleep. Um...stop by again later and we can catch up more properly," she said.

"I will," TJ replied, if only because he felt incapable of refusing the offer. She hugged them both briefly and saw them quickly to the door, closing it behind them as soon as they were out in the rain once more.

The two moved silently back to Randall's car.

"Why did you bring me here? Why did you bring me to Mikey's? Everything you've done tonight, you've done on purpose," TJ asked as Randall started up the car.

He lit up a fresh cigarette and sighed out a cloud of smoke. "Because...I guess I wanted to rip that band-aid off, you know? And I wanted to make sure you had no delusions about your friends. You need to see the truth. You've always been about the truth, TJ." TJ looked over at him, unsure of how to respond. Randall's features softened slightly as he relented. "But I'm not cruel, TJ. I think you need some...brightening up. I'll take you to see something that should make you happy," he said, pulling out of the driveway.


	8. Chapter 08: Happy

"Is this normal?" TJ asked suddenly.

That's how conversations with Randall seemed to be going tonight. They would spend long periods of time in silence, not talking to each other, and inside his head, his thoughts would be boiling and seething furiously, just going and going and _going_ until he could take it no more and he simply _had_ to talk about it.

"What?" Randall asked. TJ thought he knew damn well what, but he was being polite, and allowing TJ to explain himself.

"Does everyone just...drift away and get miserable after high school? I mean, I know Vince and Gretchen are off living the dream, but they seem so distant, they seem like..."

"Myths? Legends?" Randall posited.

"Yeah, I guess. I haven't heard from them in so long. But everyone here, I mean...it's just like we all had all this potential in high school. There was so much to do, so many possibilities. And it just seems like most of us are unhappy."

Randall shrugged. "Life is unhappy, TJ. A lot of people don't make it over the wall into happiness. What they end up doing is settling into mediocrity. And I'm not even like insulting anyone. I mean, that's life. Most people are mediocre or average because that's what average means. Society needs average people working average jobs in order to function. That's why I hate all these rich morons who go on about how everyone who isn't a millionaire is lazy and just needs to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps' and how 'no one helped me out!', without mentioning all that freaking help they got because their families were rich, or how lucky they got." He sighed and brought the car to a halt in front of another red light.

Outside, the world was dead and dark and rainy. There wasn't even a single person out there now. It was very late, the deepest, darkest part of the night.

Randall lit a fresh cigarette, then stared into his pack and heaved another sigh. "Gotta get another pack..." he muttered. "Rich people are stupid," he continued. "They get tax cuts out the ass and incentives and everything given to them on a golden platter, and they sit there and act like everyone else is a lazy slob who just can't get their crap together. If they followed their own logic, they'd realize that they're basically telling _everyone_ to be a successful millionaire. Which is literally impossible. You can't have three hundred million millionaires. And they don't even want that, because then they wouldn't be special.

"That's why they say what they say. They want to lord their money and success over everyone else. They want everyone else to feel like garbage that they aren't rich." He shook his head. "It's just going to get worse. People have been talking about the widening gap between the rich and...not even the poor, just literally everyone else. Something like three percent of people in America control like ninety five percent of the wealth, or something ridiculous like that. And it's going to get worse. Corporations lobby politicians and fund them and their campaigns, and convince them to make laws that get them more money, so that they can fund more politicians to pass more laws, and so on and so forth. It's disgusting and terrifying."

They fell silent again. The light turned green. They drove on.

Randall spoke up again after several minutes. "I'm happy," he said, and he did so in such a way as to suggest he was responding to something TJ had said previously.

"Well...good for you," TJ replied uncertainly.

Randall snorted. "I mean, you said everyone's unhappy. I'm happy."

"You seem like a picture of mental health."

"Hey, I didn't say I was mentally healthy or stable. I said I was happy."

TJ just gave him a sour look and looked back outside at the shuttered storefronts and derelict buildings they cruised past. But as they drove on in silence, he wondered if Randall maybe had a point. He was successful, clearly. What was happiness, anyway? Clearly what made Gretchen happy was different than what made him happy. Or Vince. Or Gus. They all had different definitions. Given what he knew about Randall...yeah, yeah he could see it. He could see him being happy. "You don't care what people think of you," he said finally.

"I wouldn't quite go that far," Randall replied. "I need people to trust me. Well, certain people. I need certain people to respect me. But I know how to work the angles. I was born to the form. So yes, I'm happy."

"That makes sense."

"Yep. Here we are."

Randall pulled into a small parking lot that had a surprising number of cars still in it. The place was lit up, and there were people inside. TJ studied it and figured it to be a little corner cafe. There were maybe eight or nine people inside, sitting on couches or in beanbags. He thought of Mikey, briefly, and felt a surge of guilt. Trying to push that aside, he got out after Randall killed the engine. He flicked his cigarette into the wet asphalt and led TJ up to the front entrance. They walked inside. Immediately, TJ could tell that this was a place with a good atmosphere. A comfortable, welcoming environment.

"There," Randall said, pointing to a pair of loveseats pressed up into a corner with a coffee table in front of them. Two people sat there. He thought he recognized both of them. "Go over and say hi. You'll want to talk to them. I'll get us some coffee."

"Do they have banana coffee here?" TJ asked suddenly.

Randall glanced over at him. "Banana coffee?"

"Yeah. They served banana coffee at QuikTrip last winter and it was like the greatest thing I've ever had," TJ replied.

"I'll check and see. Go on."

Randall turned away from him and approached the front counter. TJ continued staring at the two people who occupied the corner, then cautiously began to approach them. It felt weird to just...go up to people out of the blue. They were a man and a woman, around his age, a couple from the way they were sitting. The man was wearing black, baggy cargo pants, black shoes, and a black long-sleeved shirt with a big white grinning skull across the chest. The woman laying stretched out on the couch with her head in his lap. She was wearing a red skirt with blue leggings, a bubblegum pink hoodie that he vaguely recognized from a popular anime. Her hair was bright red with blue and yellow highlights streaked through.

When she looked up at him, he saw that she had different colored eyes, though he knew they had to be contacts, because all at once, he actually fully recognized her, and she hadn't had different colored eyes in school. One was bright blue, the other an almost glowing white. It made her look a little crazy, a little ethereal, a lot hot.

"Holy crap, TJ," she said.

The man decked out in black had been reading a book, but now he set it aside and looked up at him. TJ didn't recognize him fully...except for that vivid, lightning bolt like streak of white through his short jet-black hair.

"Wow, it is TJ...hi," he said.

"Hello, Sue Bob, and, um..." he stumbled, hesitated.

The man chuckled. "It's okay, I look kind of different. Butch."

Everything fell into place all at once and his eyes widened. "Butch!" he replied. "Oh wow. I...how have you two been?" he asked.

"Great. Have a sit down," Sue Bob replied. "Also, it's Chloe now. Way better than Sue Bob."

"I'm still Butch," Butch said as TJ sat down on the other couch. "What brings you around? I haven't seen you in forever."

"I...it's a long story," he replied.

"You're here with Randall," Chloe said. "I saw you two come in together."

"Yes. It's...a long story," he repeated.

Butch laughed. "I suppose it would have to be. So what's up? What've you been up to?"

TJ gave them the rundown, like he'd given several other people tonight. Really, he gave them a streamlined version, because he wanted to hear about what they were up to.

"How about you two?" he asked. "You look...healthy."

Chloe snorted. "Well, that's good to know."

"Sorry if that was weird. It's just that...I've been seeing a lot of people from my past. And you two might be the healthiest, in a variety of ways," he replied.

"Well, given who you're hanging out with, I can understand that," Chloe said.

"Actually...Randall's pretty healthy, comparatively."

"Holy crap, who the hell have you been hanging out with?" Butch asked.

"I...no one I want to talk about, I guess. But tell me, what's been up? What does your life look like right now?"

"Um, pretty amazing, if I'm being honest," Butch said. "First off," he held up his hand, back toward TJ, "we're married." Indeed, TJ could see a simple golden band on his third finger. It was tipped with a small black jewel of some kind. Chloe was wearing a replica of it. "We got married maybe a year out of high school. I know, we heard it all about how it's stupid to marry your high school sweetheart and we're throwing our lives away and this and that. But it's worked out pretty good so far. At least I think so."

Chloe rolled her eyes. "As if I don't think that, you idiot," she replied.

He smirked. "So that was good. We moved in together, got crappy jobs, and immediately set to work on pursuing our dreams."

"Which are..."

"Wow, you really don't know?" Chloe asked.

"No. Sorry. I...I've been really busy," he replied awkwardly.

"No, I'm not mad. More just impressed. Why do you think we're here at three in the damned morning? It's hard to get out now that freaking everyone recognizes us."

"We're authors," Butch said.

"Holy crap, really? Both of you?" TJ asked.

"Yep, both of us," he replied. "I've got two pen names. I've got a totally different pen name where I write gritty grim horror about serial killers and monsters sometimes, but as Butch H. Eerie, I write children's horror books. Kind of like Goosebumps."

"Except with drawings. I draw them," Chloe said.

"Yes. Exceptionally well. They're what took off, and what pays the bills for the most part. I cut a six figure deal for the series with a big publisher. I self-publish the other adult horror novels. They do okay, I guess. They're on the Kindle right now. There's three of them."

"What's the children's series about?" TJ asked.

"You'll get a kick out of this. You remember those stories I always used to cook up for you guys back in fourth grade?" he asked.

"Little Jimmy Cratner?" he answered immediately. It was really weird the things you could instantly recall and what slipped your mind.

"Yes. Wow, must've made an impression. That's what the series is about. I write about all the horror stuff he faces. Haunted houses, abducted by aliens, what's really on the other side of that fence. You remember, the one we sent Gus over to get that ball."

"I do...that's so awesome. Like, seriously, that's amazing," he replied.

"Not half as amazing as Chloe," Butch said, looking down at her. He'd been stroking her wildly colored hair as they'd spoke.

"What do you write?" he asked.

"I write a series of young adult books. Middle school through high school kinda stuff. I've got a couple of trilogies out. I just got a really big deal cause a trilogy of books I wrote straight out of high school blew the hell up. I got signed with a little indie house. They folded, I got the rights back, and I cleaned the trilogy up again and I've been shopping them around ever since. They're a lot like those Hunger Games books and because of that Butch's publisher snapped them up. Got a two hundred thousand dollar advance. Well, I will. And we're negotiating over getting my other stories back into print, and future titles. So...that's been awesome."

"Good lord, I bet. That's just...that's incredible."

"It's...I mean, yeah it is. It's also weird," Chloe said. "And certainly annoying. We get asked for autographs by busybody parents. We're thinking about moving."

"Yeah, it might be about time to hit a bigger city," Butch agreed.

They looked over as Randall appeared. "Hello compatriots," he said as he sat down next to TJ and handed him a cup. "You're in luck. They actually had banana coffee."

"I know, isn't it great?" Chloe asked.

TJ tried it. "Oh yes, it is great," he replied.

"So why are you two palling around?" Butch asked.

"I'm looking for Spinelli. He's helping me. And...acting like the freaking Ghost of Christmas Present," TJ muttered.

"Just showing him where people ended up," Randall said.

"Have you seen or heard from Spinelli recently?" TJ asked.

Both of them shook their head. "No, sorry," Butch replied.

"Well, if you're catching up on how people ended up, and I'm guessing from your sour expression, you haven't had much success at finding happy people nowadays, I could help out," Chloe said. "Have you heard about Kurst?" He shook his head. "Well, she's pretty happy. We still keep in touch. She lost a lot of weight after high school, got into shape. She's a freaking fitness instructor now. Seriously. Went to college for it and everything. She lives in Miami now."

"That's awesome," TJ said.

"Yep."

They spent a few minutes going through other acquaintances of theirs, and either TJ didn't remember them from school, or he'd already met or heard about them. Until they came to Skeens. "So you know what happened to Skeens?" Butch asked.

He shook his head. "No, what?"

"Nothing good," Chloe said with a small grimace.

"He's in prison. Doing twenty years," Butch said.

"Holy God, _why?_ "

"Ran a guy down one night when he was coming back from a bar. Drunk driving. Cops saw it, he panicked, led them on a chase. Killed the guy, but thankfully didn't hit anyone else. They got him stone cold," Butch continued.

"Jesus. What a nightmare," TJ whispered.

"Yep," Chloe said quietly.

They fell silent for a little bit. "Well, TJ, on that note, I believe I should help you out a little bit more," Randall said. "I'm trying to boost his morale."

"Here, let's trade numbers," Butch said. "I want to hang out sometime."

They traded numbers, and Butch and Chloe wished him farewell, holding hands as they left the cafe. TJ and Randall watched them go.

After a little while, TJ asked, "So who else is happy?"

Randall smiled. "You're gonna love this. Come on."

* * *

"And here we are," Randall said.

They pulled into a long parking lot that was mostly empty. There was a strip mall of single-story buildings, almost all of them dead, dark, and shuttered against the night. Only one was still lit with four cars in front of it. Randall pulled in next to them.

"What..." TJ murmured, leaning forward and studying the sign above the window in the sodium lights of the parking lot. "Game Dungeon?" he asked.

"Yep. Indie owned, my friend. Come on." Randall killed the engine and they got out.

TJ looked through the plate glass windows and found himself staring into a proliferation of all things nerd and geek. At a glance, he saw board games, mini-figures, card packs, video games from a dozen different systems, comic books, D&D books, dice collections, and more. It made something in him hurt, though he couldn't place it at first. And then, as he walked in through the front door, he had it. Some of this used to be his life.

He remembered living and breathing comic books at one point.

He remembered when he got his first Nintendo 64. Playing StarFox and Super Mario and Perfect Dark. He remembered being in love with GoldenEye 007.

TJ still played video games these days, but it wasn't the same.

There were people in the store. They were closer to the back, in an open area between several shelves covered in board games and booster packs for a variety of trading card games. Behind them, one whole shelf was covered with DVDs of Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun. TJ studied the men collected around the table. There were five of them, and he recognized all of them. Three were very pale, two had darker skin.

They were playing Dungeons & Dragons. The one sitting at the head of the table, a scrawny blonde man with glasses and a pocket protector, stopped what he was doing and looked up. "Holy crow, is that JT?" he asked.

"Yes, Knarf, it's me," TJ replied. It was weird, the kind of stuff you could instantly recall. He remembered once reading about a sci-fi concept in a cyberpunk novel, debatably _the_ cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer. In it, you could slip a tiny USB like device into your skull (provided you had the proper implant) and you could immediately know everything there was to know about a certain subject. US History. Calculus. Geography in South America. The art history of a certain period of time. He always found that concept a little difficult to comprehend, but suddenly he knew it. Because in that instant, he completely recalled all his time spent with Frank and the Pale Kids when he'd broken his collar bone. He remembered the comic books, their childhood version of D&D, Daggers & Dragons, and the board game Dungeon Masters.

All the Pale Kids were here, and he also immediately recognized Vince's older brother, Chad. And they all apparently recognized and remembered him.

"TJ and Randall," Chad said, standing up. "What brings you here in the middle of the night? Not that I'm complaining. We're open for business if you'd like something."

"TJ was visiting town and needed some cheering up," Randall replied. "Given how everything shook out for you, I thought it would do him some good to see all of you. I'm going to go peruse the comic book section. Why don't you catch TJ up on what you've got going here?"

"I think we can do that," Chad said, looking around the table. The others nodded.

"Yeah, now's a good time to break. We just got through a huge assault on a castle. It feels like a good place to break," Steve, who had been short and round as a youth, said. He seemed to have evened out a bit as he grew.

He looked...happy. They all did.

"Have a seat and we'll catch up," Chad offered.

TJ sat down, feeling strange again. Had he ever stopped feeling strange? But this was good, at least. He felt...comfortable. He felt like he was among friends. Real friends. People who he could trust, people who he didn't have to BS and put up a front.

"So, um...you all work here?" he asked.

"Oh yes. We own it," Chad replied.

"Well, largely Chad does," Frank said.

"We all own a piece...but I do own most of it," Chad admitted.

"How did that happen? Sorry, I totally lost track of like everyone when I went to college. Although I feel like I should've heard _something_ about you owning a store. Especially such a cool one," he replied, looking around.

"It can be hard to keep track of everything, and I've fallen off social media honestly. The only online presence I'm really concerned about is that of the Game Dungeon," Chad replied. "But if you're curious about the story, well, I do love telling it."

"He does," Steve confirmed, eliciting a few chuckles from the others.

"I'd definitely like to hear it," TJ replied.

"Very well then. After high school, I was debating about what to do. I mean, I've always wanted to do something like this: open a nerd haven shop. But obviously that takes a lot of money. The other guys here and I had become friends by that point, as I was looking for a D&D group and they were looking for another player. In 2004, I hit upon this huge, _huge_ freaking stroke of good luck. There were these two surplus gaming stores nearby, Game Heaven and Bargain Gaming. They ended up with a freaking glut of old games: Atari 2600 and 7800 and the Jaguar, NES, SNES, TurboGrafx-16, Sega Genesis, CD-I...I mean, God, even the freaking Neo Geo and Commodore 64. And a bunch of old PC games. I mean, we're talking _thousands_ of the things, in decent condition, and for cheap! That was the thing, they were for cheap. Like, a buck apiece. Buy one get one free. Some were just fifty cents! I spent all the money I had in my account and on me, borrowed as much as I could, sold some of my newer games and anything else I could."

"Any particular reason?" TJ asked. Obviously this was going somewhere.

"Because these games are rare now! There was a glut of them then, but not in a few years. In a few years, they'd disappear, and then people would pay big money for them. Not for all of them, but for some of them. Enough to make it worth it. I spent like eight hundred dollars over the next two days, and came away with close to two thousand games. I mean, I had freaking boxes and trashbags full of the things. I spent awhile just sorting through it all, cleaning them up, making whatever minor repairs I could to make them look better, and figure out which ones were still a dime a dozen, which ones were rarities.

"I started selling to collectors over eBay and then Amazon. My biggest break was when I found out that I had the freaking Nintendo World Championship, and in gold, too!"

"I'm afraid I'm not as familiar with Nintendo games anymore," TJ said.

Chad laughed. "Back in 1990, Nintendo had the Nintendo World Championship. They made cartridges for the winners. Only ninety copies were made of the plain gray version, and only _twenty six_ of the gold edition. I didn't even know I'd had it until about a year and a half in, because I kept thinking it was freaking Zelda, which is also gold. I think my brain just couldn't comprehend the idea. But I found it, flipped out, started looking for a buyer. I sold it for eighteen thousand dollars," he explained, grinning broadly.

"That's insane," TJ whispered.

"Yep. When I got that money...that's when we started getting serious about this idea of ours. All of us had had success of some kind since high school. Frank got a publishing deal and has a five book fantasy epic out that's still selling well, and now he's getting in on the self-publishing game for the Kindle. Steve got heavy into website design and that took off. Rodney made a retro 8-bit indie game and that blew up. Carl had a sweet IT job. We decided we wanted to do it. So we did it. We bought the place, decked it out, bought some more stock, though at the time we were mainly just a retro gaming place, since that's what I had. At that point, I still had close to a thousand of the things. We sold those, earned more money, bought a comic book stock. Sold that, earned more, bought some tabletop gaming stuff. Honestly, I think it's the atmosphere that sells the place. There's a _lot_ of people who come through here to just hang out."

"This is amazing," TJ murmured, looking at all of them. "I mean, seriously. This is like...living a dream."

"It is!" Chad agreed happily.

He hesitated, a thought occurring to him. "Does...I mean..." he hesitated further, not knowing how to ask it.

"What?" Chad asked. "Whatever it is, feel free to ask. I'm hard to offend."

"Heh, well, okay then. Does living in Vince's shadow bother you?" he asked.

"Oh, no not at all. I don't really feel like I live in his shadow. People ask me about him every now and then, but no, it doesn't. He's living his dream. I'm living mine. I'm very happy. My job is to come to a building that I own, hang out with my best friends, and talk about comics and anime and video games and D&D all day. Honestly, the only thing I want is this current life, I guess just a little more successful. Which is probably going to happen."

"We keep reinvesting and keep a lot in stock," Frank said.

"That's...awesome," TJ replied.

"What about you? It's been forever since we've seen you," Frank asked.

"I've been asked that question so many times tonight..." he sighed, suddenly very tired. "How about I swing by tomorrow and we catch up? I don't mean to be rude, it's just that I've been going all night and I'm looking for someone. I don't suppose any of you have heard from or seen Spinelli lately?"

None of them had. It was like she was a ghost.

"We understand," Chad said. "We'll be here tomorrow. We open at around noon. Speaking of which," he checked his watch, "man, it's pushing three thirty now. We should wrap this up. It's been good to see you, TJ."

"You too. All of you," TJ replied.

As if on cue, Randall reappeared. "You ready?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm ready," TJ replied.

They left the Game Dungeon.


	9. Chapter 09: Daybreak

TJ tried calling and texting Spinelli again as he and Randall hit the road. Still nothing. Straight to voicemail. He tried calling her home again. Nothing. He sighed and replaced his phone. They were back to cruising the dark wet streets of the city. The rain had yet to let up.

"Feeling better?" Randall asked.

"A little, I guess. I'm still really worried about Spinelli," he replied, then he paused and looked over at Randall. "You wouldn't be lying to me would you?"

"About what?"

"About Spinelli. Do you actually know where she is and you're just screwing with me?"

"No," Randall replied. "I'm not lying. I really don't know where she is."

TJ stared at him for several seconds. He decided that he believed him. "Okay," he said.

"Okay? You don't think I'm lying about lying?"

"No."

"Huh. Okay."

"Why, are you?"

"No, I'm really not. Tonight's been fun though."

TJ scoffed. "Maybe for you."

"You haven't been having fun?"

"Randall, the majority of the people I've seen are messed up in one way or another. Like, a lot messed up. You know?"

"Everyone's messed up in one way or another," Randall replied. "In fact-" He stopped speaking abruptly and let out a sharp curse and hit the gas. TJ looked up and saw that he'd misjudged a light and, consequently, was currently running a red light.

Well, there was no one around and it was the middle of the night-

Behind them, a police siren screamed as red-and-blue lights flared to life.

"Oh you are kidding me!" Randall cried. He drove a bit longer, then pulled over onto a side street and parked. "You don't have anything on you, do you?" he asked.

"What? Like what?"

"I don't know, weed, a gun, anything?"

"What?! No!...do you?"

"No, I never ride dirty in this car," he replied. "Just play it cool. I'll deal with it."

A moment later, the office in question did his slow cop walk up to the side of the car and knocked on the glass. Randall rolled it down. "Hello, officer," he said.

The cop shined a flashlight in. "You ran that red light back there," the cop replied.

"Yes, I did. I...don't really have a good excuse. I missed it, wasn't paying as much attention to it as I should've been," Randall replied.

TJ frowned. The cop sounded young, younger than him even, but also familiar. He studied the man behind the flashlight. "Hector?" he asked suddenly.

Both Randall and the cop looked over at him. "TJ?" the cop replied finally. "TJ Detweiler?" he paused. "When did you get back in town?"

"Just tonight," TJ replied. "I'm, uh, looking for someone." He paused. "Actually, I haven't been able to find her at all and I think something might've happened. Could you...help me?"

"How long has she been unaccounted for?" Hector asked, lowering the flashlight.

"I don't really know. I've been trying to get hold of her since about four PM today..."

"We can't officially file a missing persons report until twenty four hours, minimum. Who is it?" he asked.

"Spinelli."

"Hmm. Well listen, give us a call if she hasn't shown up by four PM tomorrow and we can do something about it," he replied.

"Okay, thanks. Um...so you became a police officer," TJ said.

Here, Hector actually offered a small laugh. "Yeah. All that stuff Gus, also known as Safety Man, taught me really stuck. I never really got out of that head-space. Becoming a cop seemed like the way I could do the most practical good."

For a moment, he wanted to ask Hector if he had spoken with Gus, what he thought of how Gus had functionally abandoned his family, but said nothing. In the silence that played out, Hector seemed to get serious again, as though he remembered the situation for what it was. His face became stoic as he considered it, looking at TJ, then at Randall.

"All right, I'm going to let you off with a warning. Be careful, Randall," he said.

"Yes, sir," Randall replied.

Hector lingered for a moment, then turned and left. Randall rolled up his window and sighed. "We're lucky it isn't near the end of the month," he said, then pulled back onto the street and drove away.

"Why?" TJ asked.

"Ticket quotas. Those tickets help pay their salaries. They have to fill a certain quota by the end of the month, so when the last stretch of days come, they look for any possible excuse and opportunity to hand out tickets."

"What? But won't that incentivize cops to give out tickets?"

"Yes."

"But that's...a terrible idea. That'd be like incentivizing firefighters to start fires just so that they'd have fires to put out."

"I agree. It's terrible."

TJ sighed. Just another thing about this supposedly glorious nation he hated. An idea, no a need, suddenly struck him, when he realized where they were. "Randall, we're close to that old park, aren't we?" he asked.

"Yes. Evergreen Park."

"Can we go there? I need to...I don't know, think," he said.

"Sure."

They pulled off the road and into the almost totally empty parking lot outside of the park. The rain had let up a bit, now more a thin mist, and the pair of them got out. Randall lit up a fresh cigarette and followed TJ as he slowly, listlessly began to walk around the path that circled a small man-made lake in the center of the park.

"I was thinking about other people," he murmured. "I mean, I've either met or heard about most of the people I remember from school."

"Who'd you like to know about?" Randall replied.

"Phil. I just remembered him. I've been going through the list. I remember he had a girlfriend and she got pregnant like right out of high school. Like three months after we graduated. Whatever happened to him?"

"He turned into a Dad. Like with a capital D. One of those helicopter parents. He obsesses over his kids. He and his girlfriend are still together. They got married before the first kid was even born. Then they had another. He's got two boys now. He's a scout master in the boy scouts. And, of course, both of his sons are full time boy scouts." He shrugged. "Go figure."

"Huh. What's he do? Like for a job."

"Basically he does anything related to the boy scouts that he can. It's like his life. His wife is the moneymaker. She's a paralegal."

"Interesting..." He fell silent.

They kept walking in silence until they had made a complete circuit of the lake. The act of walking woke something inside of him, something he wasn't sure about. TJ knew that he needed to walk some more. But…

He looked over at Randall.

He needed to walk alone.

They came to stand in front of Randall's sleek car. "I think...I need to take a long walk. By myself," TJ said after a moment.

"Okay," Randall replied. He yawned. "I need some sleep anyway. You sure you don't want me to drop you anywhere?"

"I'm sure," he replied.

Randall nodded and headed for the driver's side door. "All right, give me a call tomorrow, or let me know if you do end up needing a ride somewhere. Or if you need any more information." As he slipped his key in the lock and began unlocking it, TJ suddenly turned to face him.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked. "Why are you helping me? Driving me around? Spending all this time doing this?"

Randall pulled the key out of the lock and then turned to face him. A strange look came onto his face. It took TJ a moment to realize what that expression was, and why it looked so alien. It was honesty.

Randall was about to tell the truth. The naked, blunt truth.

"Because you're nice," he said.

TJ snorted. "What? Come on. I'm _nice?_ "

"I mean...you're a good person, TJ. Like, an _actually_ good person. When we were growing up, when we were going to Third Street, you were the only person besides Miss Finster who was nice to me just for the sake of being nice to me. We had our differences, sure, but you actually tried to help without any motivation beyond the simple desire to help. You played it off like you were making a deal with me: you make me popular, I stop ratting on your friends. But in the end, you saw how miserable I was. You saw that I wasn't happy with hollow popularity. It made no sense to you, or to anyone, but my place was at Miss Finster's side. You saw that, you knew exactly what it would mean if I were to go back...and you didn't care. You told me to go back to her anyway. Because my happiness was more important to you than your recess time.

"That is _real_ humanity. That is kindness. _That_ is what a good person looks like. I think people don't really appreciate or even know how rare that is. And that should be repaid. And nurtured. And..." he hesitated.

"And?" TJ prompted.

"And, a bit more selfishly, there's greatness to you, TJ."

"What? What does that mean?"

Randall sighed, crossed his arms and seemed to consider it. "I knew a guy, a client, who went to school with Vin Diesel. They were friends. I asked him if he knew how big Vin was going to be. He said that he did. He said even from a young age, there was this kind of sense of greatness about him. It was just this...presence. It was vague and it wasn't always there, but you could just pick up on it. I think a lot of people don't realize they're picking up on it, not beforehand, but they react a certain way. I feel that, from you."

"You're not just BSing me, are you?"

Randall shook his head. "No, I'm really not. There's something special about you, TJ. You're going to do something big, you're going to _be_ something big. And maybe I'd like to tie a little line to you beforehand. So I can use you later."

TJ couldn't help but laugh. "Well, at least you're honest."

"With you...for the most part."

"Thank you for your help, Randall. I'm sure I'll call you later."

"Okay. Good luck finding Spinelli. I'll let you know if I hear anything."

"Thanks."

He watched Randall get into his car, start it up and drive off.

When the car had disappeared completely from sight, and he was left alone with the soft misty rain, and he began walking.

* * *

He walked for a long time.

He walked through the empty streets, through the dead city, through the darkness. At one point, he stopped at another all-night cafe that hosted a handful of truckers and a pair of tired-eyed cops, and ate breakfast, because he was starving and cold and his legs were starting to hurt. TJ had sat there and eaten and then sat there longer, staring out the window, thoughts turning and twisting and tumbling in his mind.

And eventually he was driven from his booth back out into the rainy darkness by some strange need to keep walking.

He thought about people and places and the trajectory of his life, what had brought him here...and where to go from here.

TJ knew that he was standing at a crossroads.

The decision that he would make in the very near future would change the landscape of his very life...or it wouldn't.

Maybe he would go back to his office job and his apartment and his quiet responsibility.

Sometime later, the sun was beginning to peer over the horizon, and he realized that he was back in the general location of where Spinelli's house was. He had his hands in his pockets, continuing the slow walk he'd been doing along the way. At some point very recently, the rain had thinned out, then disappeared.

"Detweiler?"

He froze, immediately recognizing that voice. Turning towards it, TJ saw a man standing on his front porch, holding a newspaper all folded up in its plastic slip, staring at him intently, a pair of large black glasses on his face. "TJ Detweiler?"

"Principle Prickly?" he asked.

The man smiled. He wore a battered old bathrobe and slippers. His head was mostly bald, and what hair was left was a dark gray color. Same with his mustache. That's really what gave him away. He still had that same mustache.

"Superintendent Prickly now, young man," he replied. "What are you doing in town? It's been...years and years since I've seen you."

TJ turned and walked up his front lawn across a cracked sidewalk, because this seemed somehow significant. Of all the people he thought he would see tonight, Peter Prickly had not been on that list. But he found the chance encounter a welcome one.

"I'm, uh, looking for someone," he replied.

"Let's have a sit down," Prickly said, and took a seat on one of two lawn chairs on the front porch. They had been protected from the rain and remained dry.

TJ sat down.

"Who are you looking for?" he asked.

"Spinelli."

"Huh. I've seen her running around the neighborhood from time to time. Well, driving around it. You kids don't really run around or bike everywhere anymore." He paused. "Tell me something...what did you end up doing? I know you went to college."

"You do?"

"Yeah. I keep tabs on some of the kids that pass through my school. Some of you I'm really interested to see how you turn out. You were one of them. And most of your friends, too. Gretchen, obviously. Vince. Randall. Menlo," Prickly replied.

"Well, I went to college for a degree in politics originally. But I got nervous when the economy...collapsed, and went to business instead. I work in an office now. It's...also part of the reason I'm here. I'm..." he hesitated, wondering how far he should go into it, and decided to spill everything, because why not? Despite their differences, he'd trusted Prickly. The guy could be a hardass, but he wasn't a bad person. "I think I'm having a quarter-life crisis."

Prickly laughed, though it was just a small laugh. An understanding one. "Just wait til you get to the mid-life one. That one's a lot worse." He sighed. He looked disappointed. "Business, huh? I'll be honest, TJ, I expected more out of you."

"What do you mean? I mean, I've got a good, stable job. I pay my bills. I'm almost out of debt for college because I worked my ass off making that happen. I own a car that's paid off. I've never been to jail. I don't do drugs, I don't have any accidental kids. Or any, for that matter. I thought you, of all people, would appreciate how responsible I was being."

"I guess that's fair," Prickly replied. "And don't get me wrong, I'm impressed with all that. It's just...you aren't reasonable or responsible, TJ. You never were. And I mean that in a good way. You were always willing to take that last step, go that extra mile, that almost no one else was. You were willing to step up and do the miserable work that needed to be done to achieve something great. I mean, for God's sake, you started a freaking protest movement over a jungle gym. And I gave in! You got me to take the entire freaking school to Señor Fusion. When I tried to turn you into a little me when you 'won' principal for a day, you tricked me and ordered ice cream and festivities for the whole school."

"I thought those things made you angry. Well, except for the movie."

"Oh they did, to be sure. I was pissed, but I was also impressed. You weren't just being a juvenile delinquent. You weren't just a punk. You were standing up for people, you were trying to do right by your friends. You were a leader. I expected you to go on to be...I don't know, a movie star or a soldier or maybe even a politician."

TJ frowned, sighed. "I did want that," he murmured. "I wanted to be a Senator. Hell, I wanted to run for President, some day. There's so much I could do..."

"So what changed?"

"I got scared. I stayed scared."

"The world is a scary place, TJ. Always has been, always will be."

"I guess..." he hesitated. "I guess, I just began realizing how monumental the effort would be. How long it would take. The likelihood of failure. It was overwhelming."

"I remember thinking something similar when I began the task of becoming a principal. Although I always wanted to be superintendent. And now I am. You can't let fear stop you, TJ. And I can see that look on your face. The look that says, 'It's too late for me'. TJ, for God's sake, you're what, twenty three, twenty four?"

"Twenty four..."

"You're barely into your mid-twenties. It is _not_ too late. You have a very, _very_ long time ahead of you. Trust me. I'm sixty three, I know what I'm talking about. I know you kids look at forty as the end of time, but it's not. Not even close. Hell, sixty isn't even the 'end of time' anymore. Trust me, if you want to be a Senator, if you want to be the President, if you really want it, I think you can do it. Yes, it's going to be hard. It's going to be brutal. You're going to have sacrifice a lot. You're going to suffer. But it's worth it. Going after that, going after your dreams...it's worth it. Those lines like that, chasing your dreams, that we fed you kids all throughout school, it wasn't bull, TJ. I know it sounds cheap and cheesy, but it's the real deal.

"And you have the ability to actually _help_ people. You're charismatic, and smart, and hardworking, from what I remember. But more importantly, I think you've got a heart of gold. I think, if you found a seat of power, no one could corrupt you. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you'd stick to your morals, and you'd do the right thing."

He fell silent. TJ didn't speak, his mind continuing to run and run and run, processing everything that had just been said to him.

"Sorry if that was too heavy. Especially given it's seven in the morning and this is the first time we've spoken in years," Prickly said.

"No, it's fine. I've been...it's been a very long, very bizarre night. I saw a lot of bad things, I saw some good things. All of it's gotten me reflecting more than ever on my choices. The thing I keep coming back to is that I feel like...you're right. I wanted to do something so much more, and I feel like I copped out. I guess I've just been sorting through all that, trying to feel out if those feelings were true. And they are. I did cop out. I gave up, gave in, sold out."

"Just remember, it's not too late," Prickly said. "It'll be tough, and it'll take a long time. Years. Decades even. But try to remember that it's not just the end goal. You can do a lot of good along the way, too. And it sounds like lame crap again, but the journey makes you a better person. Who you become in the process of getting to your goals is arguably more important than reaching the goals themselves."

TJ nodded. "That...makes sense." Another moment of silence passed and he suddenly laughed. "Man, that was heavy. Um...I meant to ask you about some of the others. I've been figuring out where everyone ended up. What happened to Miss Grotke? Hank? The others?"

"Well, Miss Grotke and Hank are still there at Third Street. So is Mister Yamashrio. Miss Finster and Miss Lemon, sadly, have since passed away. Most of the teachers from around your era there are gone. Quit or transferred or fired, in a few cases. Coach Kluge is still there, though. That's about all I got. Lots of new faces since back then. Oh yes! And your vaunted Mister Dude actually works at the school now."

"Whoa, really?"

"Yes. He's been working there for about five years now. He's good. You were right about him, too. I had a feeling."

"That's crazy. So much change..."

"Well, it's been a long time."

TJ began to respond, then his phone buzzed in his pocket. His heart leaped in nervous excitement and he pulled it out. It was a text message.

From Spinelli.

 _TJ, sorry I didn't answer. I'm okay and at home. I can talk now if you want._

"Oh wow," he whispered.

"What's happening?" Prickly asked.

"I'm sorry, I have to go. I've been looking for Spinelli for literally the whole night. She asked me to come help her with something but I haven't been able to find her anywhere and apparently now she's home."

"Go on, don't let me keep you," Prickly replied. "Think about what I said. And good luck."

"Thank you," he replied, and headed off.

* * *

This time, there was a car parked in Spinelli's driveway, and the light was on in the front window. TJ hurried up to the front door. Finally. It felt like last night had lasted ages and eras. He was exhausted. He wanted to sleep for a week. The door opened up before he could get to it and there was Spinelli.

She looked...tired.

She looked like she'd had a night of her own. She was wearing a t-shirt with sleeves ripped out that had some crazy logo spray-painted across it and cut-off jeans. And she was still wearing heavy black boots.

"Hello, TJ," she said.

"Spinelli, I've been so freaking worried," he replied.

"I know. I'm sorry. I...had a bad night. Come in," she said, and turned around. He followed her into the house. They walked into the living room and sat down heavily on the couch together. For several seconds, neither spoke.

"I guess I should start with why I sent that e-mail. I was...panicking, a little. I thought I was pregnant. And I kind of freaked out. My parents are out of town, on vacation in Hawaii. I didn't want to call them about this anyway. The guy who I thought...got me pregnant, he freaked out when I brought it up and basically just broke up with me and left me in the dust. I didn't want to come to anyone with this, and...I thought of you. I remember you were my best friend. We always talked about anything at all. So that's why I sent you that e-mail. I was so...embarrassed. I couldn't even face you over the phone, not even in a text. And then I realized that I couldn't even begin to face you in person, and I just felt even worse when you texted me that you were actually freaking flying out. So I just...panicked worse. And left my house and turned off my phone."

"I'm sorry," was all TJ could think to say.

Spinelli laughed loudly. "I tell you about how I inconvenienced the hell out of you with childishness and made you piss away hundreds of dollars and _you're_ apologizing?"

"I mean...I'm sorry that you panicked. That you had to deal with that."

"Goddamnit, TJ. You're still too nice for your own good."

"I didn't piss it away, anyway. I've been seeing people all night long. I've been...doing a lot of thinking. Honestly, I'm so very glad I came to town and spent all night looking for you. I've been having troubles of my own."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah...and sorry I gotta ask, but I gotta know, you're really keeping me in suspense. Are you pregnant?"

"Oh. No, I'm not. My period's just late. I probably wouldn't have flipped out, but this came at a really, really bad time. I'm just...my life's been crap for too long now. I just lost my job and had a big argument with my parents before they left and I got a huge ticket for speeding last week and I don't have the money to pay for it..." She heaved a sigh. "I finally bought a pregnancy test half an hour ago and took it. So at least I don't have to put up with _that_ whole freaking mess." She sighed heavily and rubbed at her eyes.

"I'm so tired," she muttered.

"Same," TJ agreed.

"So...what's your problems? We haven't talked in too long."

"I've been hearing that a lot lately. I pretty much drifted away from everyone. I guess, in a nutshell, I feel like I sold out. I went to college, got a business degree, and now I'm an office drone. I sit in a cubicle all day."

"Whoa, really?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. I always thought you'd do something nuts." She paused. "Sorry, I guess that isn't making you feel better. If it helps, I know how you feel."

"How so?"

She shook her head and then hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them. "I keep running from my dream job cause it's so freaking hard and everyone tells me I'm nuts. I keep trying to make other things work. I've had like thirty jobs since high school. They all sucked. I mean, I was thinking about becoming a stripper, you know that? Me. A stripper."

"Well...I could see it," he replied.

She looked over at him. "What?"

"I mean...you're certainly still fit," he said. "And it seems like a pretty athletic job."

She scoffed. "Yeah, that's one half. The other half is being hot. I scare a lot of guys."

"Oh come on, you're obviously hot," he replied, rolling his eyes.

"Obviously?" she asked. "It's not obvious to me. I don't give a crap about makeup, I barely remember to comb my damned hair, I still dress like a tomboy, and ever since I started working out all the time, you can actually see my muscles."

"And?"

"And that's not hot. That's...weird. Everyone thinks I'm a lesbian or something."

"What difference does that make? There's a lot of different kinds of hot."

"So you're saying you think I'm hot?" she asked, now facing him.

He shifted a little nervously. "I mean...well yeah." He tried to change the subject. "So, um, what's your dream job?" he asked.

"MMA," she replied. "Mixed Martial Arts stuff. You ever see those MMA matches on TV?"

"Yeah, a few times. That's some intense stuff."

"It is. And I want to do it. But everyone tells me it's stupid."

He sighed. "Everyone's always going to tell you that. I'm sure if I started going around saying what I wanted to do, people would say the same thing."

"Oh yeah? What do you want to do?"

"I want to be a Senator, and maybe someday the President," he replied. It didn't feel awkward or uncomfortable to tell it to her.

"I could see it," she said after a moment. "I mean, we were all talking about our dream jobs back at Third Street, and that was yours. You got a brain for it, anyway." She paused. "Why didn't we ever hook up in high school, TJ?" she asked.

"I mean...I don't know. You never asked?" he replied awkwardly.

"Yeah, but neither did you. I felt like, a few times, maybe you got close. Is there some reason you didn't? I mean...I won't be mad if you said it's cause you just don't like me that way or I turn you off or something."

"No, no. It was nothing like that. I mean..." He paused, considering it. Why _did_ he never ask her out? "I guess...maybe I was afraid of messing up the friendship? Or maybe I was intimidated by you," he replied.

"Did you want to? Hook up, I mean."

"Yes. I did."

"I did, too."

They paused.

"Do you still want to?" he asked.

"I mean...yeah. Seeing you again, knowing that you freaking flew out here, you dropped everything and flew out here to check on me, looked for me all night long...of course I do." She stopped smiling suddenly. "I just feel like I don't deserve you. I'm a mess."

"I don't care," he replied. "I like _you,_ Spinelli. And I mean, I'm boring and lame. Although if I actually decide to go through with my decision to become a Senator, that's going to change."

"You're really thinking about doing it?" Spinelli asked. She looked suddenly excited.

"I'm really thinking about doing it," he replied.

"TJ...this is crazy but I feel crazy right now, it's been a crazy night and everything's been so wrong for so long but you being here and now and this conversation just feels _right_ and maybe we should get together and start doing the things we really want to do. I can go for MMA and you could go for politics," she said. She said it all at once, really fast, like she had to get it all out before something stopped her.

He stared at her. She stared back at him.

"I think...that makes sense," he said finally.

Was part of the reason he'd come out here because he'd been curious about what might have been left between them?

To be sure, there had been a spark there for a long time. Neither had had the guts to foster it. TJ had come out here for a lot of reasons, but yes, he was certain now, looking at her, that this was definitely one of them.

"So...yes? I mean, I'm saying we should like be boyfriend and girlfriend and move in together and do all the hard stuff it's going to require. And..." she looked down at herself. "Well, what you see is what you get, I'm afraid. You know me and all my annoying habits and shortcomings and all the crap," she said.

"Spinelli...I want to do this," he said. "We'll need some time to sort everything out, and yes, it's going to be really hard to go after our dreams, but I want to do this. Even knowing how hard it's going to be, I want to do this. It feels like this is what we should have done a long time ago."

Spinelli moved forward suddenly and wrapped him in a hug while pressing her lips to his. Kissing her felt natural. It felt like something he'd been wanting to do for a very, very long time. So long that he had forgotten it.

"Let's go upstairs," she said. "We've got the house to ourselves."

"I, um, wow. You don't think this is a little fast?" he asked nervously, not really because he believed it, he wanted her very badly right then, but because he felt like it was something he probably should say. Or one of them should say.

"Come on, TJ. We've known each other for twenty years. This isn't fast."

"I...okay," he said.

There was a lot to do, he knew as she took his hand and began leading him up to her bedroom. There were people to talk to, decisions to be made, situations to deal with. There was a mountain of work ahead of him, ahead of both of them.

But for right now, he didn't think about any of that.

He only thought about her.

And their future.


End file.
